Re: st: Compress a closed file

[Daniel Feenberg <feenberg@nber.org>]

On Tue, 22 Feb 2011, Mohamad Al Ississ wrote:

> Hi,
> The file I'm trying to open a file that's too large for my Stata's memory (I
> maxes the memory setting). I get the "no room to add more observations..."
> error. I know that if I compress the file, it'll solve the problem. Is there
> a way to compress the file w/o opening it?
> Thanks!

There is a Stata FAQ on dealing with datasets too large to fit into 
memory, that involves dividing the dataset into N sections, and subsetting
each section to extract the analysis variables, and finally appending the 
subsets into an analysis dataset. See:

  http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data/dataset.html

I think an easier procedure is to simply separate the sample selection and 
analysis steps, and describe that in:

  http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/large-stata-datasets.html

The 2-step procedure will be considerably less code than the N-step 
procedure for many jobs, and may be faster.

Daniel Feenberg
NBER
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