st: repeat same commands over hundreds of files

[tbrunell <tlb056000@utdallas.edu>]

I am doing some simple analysis on election data that spans all the states and several decades.
So I have hundreds of files that I want to do the same relatively simple analysis on (I have an example below).
At first I started writing .do files for each state/year and the only things I changed were the 
1) file name for the insheet command
2) the name and location of the collapsed file at the end.

However, when I wanted to add an additional command this meant opening hundreds of separate .do files, making a change, resaving the file.  It is not the end of the world, but I would prefer to set up the commands and then, somehow, tell stata to run the commands separately for each specified file and then save the resulting file with some new name.

The techs at Stata recommended using macros for file names and the foreach command.  But that doesn't solve my filename and output file problem.

Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Tom Brunell
Professor of Political Science
University of Texas at Dallas

_____________________________
clear
insheet using "/Users/tbrunell/MPG/CT/mpg_09_CTC1972_1972_EDCD11_10_JH22.csv"
drop in L /*this drops file notation at the bottom*/
compress

gen demper=dem/(dem+rep)
gen demwin=.
replace demwin=1 if demper>.5 & demper~=.
replace demwin=0 if demper<.5
sort rkey
gen overalldemper=overalldem/(overalldem+overallrep)

*here overalldemper will be total votes percentage, demper is "normalized" vote - averaged across districts
collapse (count) numberofseats=demper (sum) demwin (mean) year demper overalldemper (p50) median=demper,by(rkey)
gen percentdemdist=demwin/numberofseats

save "/Users/tbrunell//MPG/CT/CTC1970s", replace
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