Join the club! I went through your pains a couple of months ago with the
full docu present, and still ended up screaming for help...
There is a book forthcoming "An Introduction to Stata Programming" from
Stata Press. Other than that, it definitely helps to trace the action on
Statalist and experiment with the examples people sometimes provide.
Specific questions are usually answered quickly on the list, so posting
definitely helps as well...
Good luck,
Martin Weiss
_________________________________________________________________
Diplom-Kaufmann Martin Weiss
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72074 Tuebingen
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Fon: 0049-7071-2978184
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-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jacob Wegelin
Sent: Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:09 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: st: seeking text that explains how to program
Am I correct in believing that neither the Web nor the help files is a
substitute for the hard-copy Stata manuals?
Beyond Christopher F. Baum's helpful SUGUK 2005 invited lecture, "A little
bit of Stata programming goes a long way", what text(s) or article(s) or
url(s) would be helpful for one who wishes to learn how to automate
procedures in Stata, i.e., to write programs in Stata?
For instance:
I'm a raw beginner with Stata's "program" command and with Stata's
programming power in general, and don't understand the syntax.
The following help file: http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?program gives a
tantalizing bit of information and then says
See [U] 18 Programming Stata for a description of programs.
See [P] trace for information on debugging programs.
Neither of these is a link, which suggests that this information is simply
not available on the web or in the built-in Stata help files.
Also, the help files for "local", for "postfile", and for some other
commands appear to leave some questions unanswered. For instance, how
exactly does one specify the types of variables in "postfile" so as not to
get an error? The help file appears to hint that the default type for a
variable is numeric, and that groups of variables with the same type should
be listed in parentheses:
postfile `memhold' a b str20 c double(d e f) using "`results'"
but it doesn't state this explicitly. Is there a book that explains this all
for beginners?
Thanks for any info
Jake
Jacob A. Wegelin
[email protected]
Assistant Professor
Department of Biostatistics
Virginia Commonwealth University
730 East Broad Street Room 3006
P. O. Box 980032
Richmond VA 23298-0032
U.S.A.
http://www.people.vcu.edu/~jwegelin
*
* 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/
