Re: st: Keeping significant spaces with -infile- and -infix-

[Phil Bardsley <phil_bardsley@unc.edu>]

Joseph Coveney wrote:

> How can significant unimbedded spaces of string variables be retained when
> importing fixed-width ASCII files?
Last year I brought this up with Stata Tech Support and got the reply below from Kevin Crow. The application I was working on needed to be automated in a way that precluded using Kevin's approach. I ended up going through SPSS first, then converting to Stata, since SPSS preserves leading and trailing blanks. What I'd like to see in Stata is something like a "notrim" option on -infile- that would keep leading and trailing blanks.

----------------------------
Dear Phil,

You might try using the -file- command to preserving leading blanks when
importing your text data into Stata.  -file- is a programmer's command and
should not be confused with outfile, outsheet, -insheet-, -infile-, or -infix-,
which are the usual ways data is imported and exported in Stata.  -file- allows
programmers to read and write both ASCII text and binary files, so -file- could
be used to write a program to input data or export data in some complicated
situation.  For further assistance using the -file- command type -help file- in
your Command window.  
----begin log file----
. clear

. tempname fh

. file open `fh' using vcal.dat, read

. file read `fh' line

. local j = 1

. set obs 1
obs was 0, now 1

. while r(eof)==0 {
 2.         
.         if `j' == 1 {
 3.                 generate casid  = substr("`line'", 1, 15) in `j'
 4.                 generate vcol_1 = substr("`line'", 18, 1) in `j'
 5.                 generate vcal_1 = substr("`line'", 19, 79) in `j'
 6.                 file read `fh' line
 7.                 generate vcol_2 = substr("`line'", 18, 1) in `j'
 8.                 generate vcal_2 = substr("`line'", 19, 79) in `j'
 9.         }
10.                         
. file read `fh' line
11. file read `fh' line
12. file read `fh' line
13. file read `fh' line
14. 
. }

. list

    +------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 1. |                      casid             |            vcol_1             |
    |                     2 6  3             |                 1             |
    |------------------------------------------------------------------------|
    | vcal_1                                                                 |
    |          1111111BPPPPPPPP0000000000000000000111111111111111111111111.. |
    |------------------------------------------------------------------------|
    |     vcol_2     |                                            vcal_2     |
    |          2     |                                                 2     |
    +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

. gen stl=strlen(vcal_2)

. list stl vcal_2

    +-----------------------------------------------------+
    | stl                                          vcal_2 |
    |-----------------------------------------------------|
 1. |  45                                               2 |
    +-----------------------------------------------------+
----end log file----




Sincerely,

Kevin Crow


--
Phil Bardsley <phil_bardsley@unc.edu>
Research Programming Services
Carolina Population Center
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27516 USA
919-966-2825

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