Hi,
Here is my take on (2).
If you are going to use stata's do editor, then it can get real messy if you
put all the notes, comments and anything else into it. Alternative would be
to use some external text editor which can be integrated with stata.
You can find more information here
http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/t/textEditors.html
I use notepad++. When I started, I relied on the built in do editor.
However, as my do files became more complicated. I found it difficult.
(Whether that complication was a good thing or not I do not know!). My main
problem was
When I had say three different ways of doing something in the middle of a do
file, my do files looked extremely complicated and I was loath to keep
several different do files. I found the block feature very useful for this.
Another was replacing something across multiple dofiles. Syntax highlighting
I found useful. But more than even a simple thing like being able to make a
font bold or italicised improved readability a lot. But, the built in editor
doesn't allow that.
This issue has come up many times here, even in the shortime that I have
been here. The built in editor is certainly useful for doing small things
like testing code say from some post on the statalist or something like
that.
Setting up the external editors may seem like a hassle but the good people
here have made several useful pages available and it shouldn't be too
difficult to get things set up.
Hth
rajesh
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Man Jia
Sent: 18 September 2008 16:10
To: [email protected]
Subject: st:tips to manage multiple do files?
Hi all,
I was wondering if anyone could share any tips of managing many do
files for one research project. Thanks for your help!
----------------------------------------------
(1) How to make it easy to find some specific work in several do files?
Now I have to open most of them to see if the file has the part I'm
looking for. The thing is, it is kind of hard to remember clearly the
content of each file after even two or three days not working with
them. I tried to write outline in the beginning of each file, but I
have to open each of them to get the outline.
----------------------------------------
(2) detailed comments in do files
For me it's useful to have detailed comments to explain what I'm
doing in most parts in a do file. Those details include what the
commands are doing, anything I should be careful with in future,
sources I get the ideas, why the alternative ways are not good, summary
of the results..... But a do file has limitation of number of lines in
it. So, Writing a lot of comments means I have to create many do files.
So, is there any good habit to deal with this? Is it better that in do
files just add concise comments and take notes in other files?
----------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your time! I really appreciate it.
Mandy
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
