Hello everyone - Thanks to Kit Baum, a new variation of a program for writing Stata data in a format that can be read by WinBUGS is now on the SSC. The new program, -bugwrite-, is similar to -bugsdat- but in some cases may be easier to use.
More specifically, here are some differences:
Options -bugsdat- has that -bugwrite- does not:
1.Can write data as arrays (dim option),-bugwrite- only writes in long form.
2.Put user-specified text as the beginning of the file (data option),
3.Change the names of variables in the output (name option).
Options that -bugwrite- has that -bugsdat- does not:
1.Allows [in] (as well as [if]),
2.Can display or suppress output to the screen or to a file as desired, whereas -bugsdat- automatically does both.
3.Can specify number of data columns of output (columns option)
4.Can specify the total width in number of characters (width option).
5.Other options for making it easier to view the layout (leftpad, rightpad, space options).
Other differences
-bugwrite- displays/writes only the data as it normally appears in Stata (not including rounding errors), thus making it easier to view or check output. For example, 0.24 will be written as ".24", not ".239999994635582".
Al Feiveson, James Fiedler
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* 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/
