Re: st: possible bug in outsheet?

[Adrian Mander <Adrian.Mander@mrc-hnr.cam.ac.uk>]

Thanks Joseph I never noticed that it was the display format that was 
driving outsheet.

So let's get back to the original question and actually this feature 
isn't documented anywhere that I could find.
Interestingly the manual states about outsheet "About all that can go 
wrong is that the file you specify already exists:".

I received this dataset from someone else and I doubt that I would 
ever change display formats.

For exporting data wouldn't it be better to use the most accurate 
dataset (obviously to how ever many digits that Stata is accurate to, I
vaguely remember something about 24 bit numbers)? Or perhaps Stata 
could be slightly more intelligent and figure out the best
display format or at least within some accuracy realise that the 
display format is insufficient for the current variable and give a 
warning message?

cheers
Ade




At 14:53 16/04/2007, you wrote:

> One more time, to supplement the first reply:  it seemed have been on
> the -outsheet- side rather than on the -insheet- side.  -outsheet- formats
> the output according to the display format, which was %2.0f in your example.
> This is where the truncation (rounding) appears to have occurred.  In the
> example below, Stata isn't tricked even by 199 integer zeroes on
> the -insheet- step.
>
> Joseph Coveney
>
> . clear
>
> . set seed `=date("2007-04-16", "ymd")'
>
> . set obs 1
> obs was 0, now 1
>
> . tempfile tmpfil0
>
> . generate double a = uniform()
>
> . tostring a, replace format(%18.16f)
> a was double now str18
>
> . set obs 200
> obs was 1, now 200
>
> . replace a = "0" in 2/200
> (199 real changes made)
>
> . generate byte last = _n == 1
>
> . sort last
>
> . replace last = 1 in 1
> (1 real change made)
>
> . outsheet using `tmpfil0', noquote
>
> . insheet using `tmpfil0', double clear
> (2 vars, 200 obs)
>
> . describe
>
> Contains data
>  obs:           200
> vars:             2
> size:         2,600 (99.9% of memory free)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>              storage  display     value
> variable name   type   format      label      variable label
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> a               double %10.0g
> last            byte   %8.0g
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sorted by:
>     Note:  dataset has changed since last saved
>
> . format a %18.16f
>
> . list a if last
>
>     +--------------------+
>     |                  a |
>     |--------------------|
>  1. | 0.0000000000000000 |
> 200. | 0.6328111810144037 |
>     +--------------------+
>
> . erase `tmpfil0'
>
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/