st: Re: FORTRAN

["Joseph Coveney" <jcoveney@bigplanet.com>]

Stata SpecialEdition wrote:

I have been using STATA for two years now and I LOVE it. I now need to
do some more complicated estimation in a language called FORTRAN. Is
it possible to read my STATA files in FORTRAN? A colleague said it was
impossible and I would have just save it as an ASCII. Is this the best
way? I just wanted to check whether this is the case with some STATA
(and hopefully FORTRAN experts).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The format of Stata's dataset files (.dta) are published, and so, if you're up 
to it, you probably *could* read them with a suitable FORMAT / READ statement 
(or set of FORMAT / READ statements) in Fortran.  Like your colleague, though, 
I question the worthiness of such an undertaking for any applications that 
you're likely to encounter.

I'd go with ASCII, just as your colleague says.

Joseph Coveney


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