st: An ado file for quickly switching working directories

[Malcolm Wardlaw <malcolm@mail.utexas.edu>]

I have a lot of original data sequestered away in specific working 
directories that I like to be able to access on the fly when I am doing 
quick and dirty analysis on data (as opposed to more formal programming 
where I use do files).

I'm not an expert programmer and, while it works, I'm not sure if this 
is the most efficient way to go about it.  It basically reads an 
existing text file line by line and takes the first matching variable 
cue to switch directories.  It also provides for a reading of the entire 
list of potential directories with the variable "list".  I'll post the 
file below.  If anyone has any better approaches (or possible 
extensions), I'd like to hear them.  Also, I don't know if there's 
already a better, pre-constructed file for this.  If it's an OK 
approach, then I suppose I'd just like to share it with everyone if 
people would like to use it.

-----------------------------------------
wd.ado:
      program define wd
               version 9.2
               if "`1'" == "list" {
                   type "c:\ado\personal\workingdir.txt"
                   di("")
                   di("<--current directory-->")
                   pwd
                   di("<--current directory-->")
                   }
           else{

               tempname fh
               local linenum = 0
               file open `fh' using "c:\ado\personal\workingdir.txt", read
               file read `fh' line
               while r(eof)==0{
                       local a: word 2 of `line'
                       if word(`"  `macval(line)'"',1)=="`1'"{
                       cd "`a'"
                       }
                       file read `fh' line
               }
               file close `fh'
           }
       end
-----------------------------------------
workingdir.txt:

data "c:\data"

ds "c:\my documents\dealscan original\"

dse "c:\my documents\Stata Data\fixed master\"

gold "c:\my documents\Stata Data\Gold data\"

cov "c:\My Documents\Stata Data\Covenant Research\"

ado "c:\ado\personal"

myd "c:\My Documents\Stata Data\"
-----------------------------------------

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