st: Re: re: -firstdigit- available from SSC

["Zou Hong" <hzou@ln.edu.hk>]

Thanks all for those who have engaged in the useful discussions. I learned a 
lot.
Joe

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kit Baum" <baum@bc.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2007 10:36 PM
Subject: st: re: -firstdigit- available from SSC



> sacrificial wget
>
> Nick said
>
> There is no simple way to do this. Apart from
> those user-written ado files that remain private,
> those in the public domain and on the internet may be
> in many different places:
>
> 1. The Stata Journal/Stata Technical Bulletin website.
>
> 2. SSC.
>
> 3. All other institutional and personal websites.
>
> There is no central directory, and long may that remain
> so. Rather, -findit- will find (most) of what is there
> is, so long as you feed it keywords.
>
> Even if it were possible, it would not be a good idea:
>
> 1. You would still have the problem of identifying
> what you had installed and working out what was any
> good to you.
>
> 2. You would be installing software of different degrees
> of generality and quality. Some of it has also been
> superseded by other programs. Some of it is buggy.
>
> 3. There is no guarantee that different user-written programs will
> use distinct filenames.
>
>
>
> I would add that a common problem discussed on this list is that a  user 
> will do, say, 'findit instrumental variables' and learn that a  routine 
> named ivreg2 is available. The first mention of that in - findit's- output 
> will be in the Stata Journal website. But that  version is not the most 
> recent version; the most recent version is  available from 
> SSC. -adoupdate-, although smart, is not smart enough  to figure this out 
> (and doing so, given the structure of Stata  packages, is close to 
> logically impossible). If you install the most  recent version from SSC, 
> though, -adoupdate- will help you make sure  it is up to date.
>
> So mindlessly installing stuff from _both_ Stata Journal / Stata Tech 
> Bulletin and SSC is generally dangerous without noting which is the  newer 
> routine. Many routines which have appeared in SJ/STB have  updated 
> versions on SSC.
>
>
> Kit Baum, Boston College Economics and DIW Berlin
> http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
> An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata:
> http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html
>
>
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