You wrote that -insheet- with subsequent deletion of unwanted data is
"sloppy". That approach might still be the easiest if all files have
the same structure and your data always appear in the same columns.
. insheet using filename, nonames
. drop if _n < 30 | _n > 129
. drop v1 - v20 v25 - v30
Friedrich
On Feb 18, 2008 9:26 AM, Joseph Wagner <[email protected]> wrote:
> I have data I wish to input a portion of into STATA. Data is collected
> on patients by a machine that measures their gait as they walk. A text
> file is output for each patient with columns representing variables
> (each about 130 lines long) but the multiple observation data doesn't
> start until line 29. The first 28 lines are taken up with short lines
> of data describing the patient. Unfortunately, I also need a couple of
> those lines in 'header' area. The 29th line has the variables names but
> they do not line up directly with the columns of data so I figured I
> could just label the data later. The data I need starts 30 lines down
> at column 115 and includes the next 4 columns and goes down 100 lines.
>
> I realize there are easier ways to do this but I have data on about 300
> patients (and so one file for each person) and wanted to automate this
> input (followed by successive merging of files to get my final dataset).
>
> I wanted to use the -infix- command but have never used this command
> before and my attempts so far have failed. I also tried using -infile-
> with the _first(30) option and the _line(30) option but those didn't
> seem to work either.
>
> Here is a dictionary I attempted with just one of the variables:
>
> dictionary using "c:\data\gait\SBS00001_20050607_1.nrm" {
> _line(30)
> _column(115) r_grf_vrt_frc %5f
> }
>
> infile using SBS00001_20050607_1.dct
>
> unexpected end of file
> (5 observations read)
>
> The other problem is that it didn't seem to pull the data corresponding
> to that column. I thought perhaps there was a problem with the data not
> being in a fixed format but if I try -insheet- all the data imports and
> the correct data lines up in the individual columns. Of course I could
> write some programming whereby I delete the unneeded variables and line
> but that's kind of sloppy.
>
>
>
> I am using STATA ver. 8.2
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