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Re: Re: st: .dta storage, why is too big?
From
Daniel Marcelino <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: Re: st: .dta storage, why is too big?
Date
Wed, 8 Jun 2011 16:31:02 -0300
Maybe something evil got my computer because I never seen .dta files
smaller than .txt. I´ll try save a sample of data without variable and
value labels to inspect the real changes in the size.
I'm using Stata 11.1 MP on Mac, sometimes I also access the files
through Stata 11.1 SE on Windows.
Daniel
On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Clyde Schechter
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Clarification to my earlier post (below)
>
> Stata's specifications for the .dta format includes some "overhead" that
> describes the contents of the file. So, of course, one could create a toy
> data set that has 1 observation on 1 byte variable, and it would be larger
> as .dta than as .txt.
>
> What I meant to say is that I have never seen a real-world data set where
> the .dta is larger than the .txt version.
>
> Clyde Schechter
>
>
> On Tue, 7 Jun 2011, Daniel Marcelino wrote:
>
>> Hello for all,
>>
>> today I came across my old and new files size, R and Stata storage
> respectively. This got me thinking about why Stata compression is too
> inefficient compared to R? Even thought I use variable attributes like
> labels R compression is incredible. For example, 530 mb of Stata file
> turns into 9 mb R file and about 330 mb as txt file. So, my point is:
> do you know any trick to compress Stata files addition to command line
> "compress".
>
> and Daniel Feenberg replied that Stata doesn't do any "Shannonesque
> compression."
>
> That is true, but I really wonder if there isn't something wrong with
> Daniel Marcelino's Stata installation, or something very odd about the
> file that provoked his post. I have been using Stata since version 4 and
> I have _never_ in all those years encountered a data set that was larger
> as .dta than as a text file. The .dta version may not be much smaller
> than the text version, but, I have never seen it be larger.
>
>
> Clyde Schechter
> Associate Professor of Family & Social Medicine
> Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, USA
>
> Please note new e-mail address: [email protected]
>
>
>
> Clyde Schechter, MA MD
> Associate Professor of Family & Social Medicine
>
> Please note new e-mail address: [email protected]
>
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>
--
Daniel Marcelino
http://danielmarcelino.zip.net
Skype: d_marcelino
*
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