Re: st: Output tables, tabulations, etc to a text file

[Jeff Pflueger <jeff@infouse.com>]

Austin,
Thanks for this. If you wouldn't mind with some clarification: It seems 
to me that creating new datasets as the desired tables and then 
appending the datasets into one dataset to be outsheeted is an enormous 
work-around. Can't I simply output to a file the results of a -tabulate- 
and put the results on the end of a progressively growing file as I loop 
through the US states?

Is your method the standard way to output complex tables from Stata?
What is the best method for outputting a complex table from Stata as a 
comma or tab delimited file?

Below are questions on your proposed method:

> Jeff Pflueger <jeff@infouse.com>:
> You may want a loop that -use-s each dataset in turn,
Exactly. I am already doing that in the do file.
>  -collapse-s to a
> "tab" dataset,
I am indeed collapsing to accomplish something else with each 
dataset.....but what is collapsing to a "tab" dataset? So rather than 
using a command like -tabulate- to create results, I could accomplish 
this from within a -collapse- command and actually create a new dataset? 
What does the syntax look like for something like this?

>  then -append-s to put all the "tabs" together in one
> dataset,
That makes sense if I were working with newly created datasets as 
opposed to standard Stata output.

>  then perhaps -outsheet- to write a tab-delimited file.  This
> is also possible with -file- but more work to write.  Hard to say what
> is optimal for you given only the info below.
>
> On Wed, Jul 9, 2008 at 7:47 PM, Jeff Pflueger <jeff@infouse.com> wrote:
>   
> > I have a do file that goes through a dataset for each US state.
> > From each state I need a few pieces of information by county. Most of this I
> > can do for each state through tabulate:
> >
> > tabulate county interesting_yes_no_question [fw=weight]
> >
> > I'd like to take the results of the tabulation and append them to a results
> > file that is comma or tab delimited so that by the time the do file has gone
> > through all the state datasets, I have a single comma or tab delimited file
> > of the results for all of the states.
> >
> > There seems to be about half a dozen approaches to getting Stata output into
> > a file. None seem too clean at this point. Nothing I've seen is too elegant
> > yet.
> >
> > Isn't there an easy way that I can take the results from a command like
> > tabulate and then use "file" to append them to the end of a file?
> >
> > Thanks for any help!
> > Jeff
> >     
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