st: RE : st: RE : st: Do-file no result, command line OK

[<X.Y.Vollenweider@lse.ac.uk>]

Unfortunately not. - browse if variable=="." - gives observations such as:
BP P.L.C.
However, once I copy and past the line in the command line instead of running the dofile, I get:
BP PLC
Best,
Xavier

NB. You get the missing values if you write -browse if variable==""-
-------- Message d'origine--------
De: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu de la part de DE SOUZA Eric
Date: mar. 29/03/2011 13:59
À: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Objet : RE: st: RE : st: Do-file no result, command line OK
 
Missing or lacking data is indicated by a dot in Stata. Isn't this what you are getting if you browse through the data with the Data Editor. If you export the data there will be nothing there.


Eric de Souza
College of Europe
Brugge (Bruges), Belgium
http://www.coleurope.eu



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of X.Y.Vollenweider@lse.ac.uk
Sent: 29 March 2011 14:53
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: RE : st: RE : st: Do-file no result, command line OK

Thanks for your answer. To be more precise, my concern is that in the best case not all the changes have been made and in the worst case no change at all has been made. Indeed, I found many observations just by skimming through the data with some dot(".") although they should all have been uniformly removed by the command line:

replace companyname_short=subinstr(companyname,"."," ",.)

best,

Xavier


-------- Message d'origine--------
De: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu de la part de Nick Cox
Date: mar. 29/03/2011 13:39
À: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Objet : Re: st: RE : st: Do-file no result, command line OK
 
I don't know how looking in the Data Editor can convince you that nothing has changed among 5 million observations. Did you check all of them?

The only convincing evidence that nothing has changed is that you clone the variable, issue the -replace- command on the clone, and then compare with the original.

Nick

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 1:31 PM,  <X.Y.Vollenweider@lse.ac.uk> wrote:

> Thanks Uli, but no -preserve- nor -restore-. Quite weird indeed.

Ulrich Kohler

> This sounds pretty weird.
>
> I sometimes experience something like this in Do-Files with a
> -preserve-/-restore- part in it. When running those parts of the 
> Do-File that contain the -preserve- command but does not contain the 
> -restore- command, the end of the Do-file brings you back to the 
> preserved data set.

> X.Y.Vollenweider@lse.ac.uk:

>> I am running a do-file on a large dataset (4'999'453 observations). One of my command is:
>>
>> replace companyname_short=subinstr(companyname,"."," ",.)
>>
>> That is, I replace the dot in the variable "companyname" by a blank in the variable "companyname_short". When I run the do-file, stata tells me that x hundred thousands of "real changes" have been made, but actually nothing have changed in my dataset when I open the data viewer. However, when I copy and past the command from the do-file into the command line, everything works fine.
>>
>> Any idea to make it run smoothly with the do-file?

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