Sergiy,
I posted this same question two years ago:
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2006-07/msg00097.html
and received no satisfactory response. I often have the
same problem you have, and proposed that -append- have an
-empty- option, for instance, so that I can force it to
use the file if there is nothing in memory. I guess it will
have to go on a wishlist for StataCorp.
cheers,
Jeph
Sergiy Radyakin wrote:
Dear all,
is there any reason for -append- to refuse to run when there is no
data in memory?
clear
append using something.dta
I often have a list of files to combine, and go with a simple loop,
but when none of them is in memory, I have to brunch the program to
specially treat the first file in the list, which is annoying. Since
-append- is built-in, I can't look into what it is doing or needing.
Otherwise I wish -append- worked as -use- when there is no data in
memory. So that the below code could work.
local bunch_of_files "alpha beta gamma delta"
clear
foreach file of local bunch_of_files {
append using `"`file'"', nolabel
}
Notably it is not the observations that -append- requires, but
variables, e.g. the following works:
local bunch_of_files "alpha beta gamma delta"
clear
generate byte __STRANGE_VAR_NAME=1 /* still zero observations here */
foreach file of local bunch_of_files {
append using `"`file'"', nolabel
}
drop __STRANGE_VAR_NAME
Thank you, Sergiy Radyakin
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