Re: st: multiple merging

[Abhimanyu Arora <abhimanyu.arora1987@gmail.com>]

How very marvellous, Nick, nmerge works fine without the use of
compound double quotes (surprisingly). But just to make sure I am
understanding the nitty-gritties, do the characters *! mean non-SSC
user written files?
Cheers
Abhimanyu


On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 12:51 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> The side-effects of =subinstr() were discussed in a recent thread.
> Don't use it here. Use -: subinstr -.
>
> Contrary to your earlier report, -nmerge- is not on SSC. It is from
>
> http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ado/analysis
>
> If you look at the code you will see that the program (not do-file)
> doesn't have a  *! line. That's not illegal.
>
> I have never used -nmerge- but I think your `" "' are not helping at
> all. You probably need something more like
>
> local files4 : subinstr local files ".dta" "", all
> nmerge date using `files4'
>
> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 11:26 AM, Abhimanyu Arora
> <abhimanyu.arora1987@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Nick
>> Thanks very much indeed. Helps clear my understanding both of
>> -gettoken- and the use of compound double quotes.
>> Even as I await Ryan Knight's reply with regard to SSC's -mergeall-, I
>> was trying using Mike M Mitchell's -nmerge- (the -which- command
>> doesn't seem to display the version of the do file).
>>
>> The use of nmerge requires the file names in its syntax (simply
>> separated by spaces, hence the reason for using the extended macro fcn
>> clean—but error both with and without this)
>>
>> After the use of gettoken I get the file names but each in double
>> quotes. Say the macro files contains the strings "file1.dta"
>> "file2.dta" ...
>>
>> Assume we start with file0 (the one to which others will merge)
>>
>> Complementing with
>> local files4=subinstr(`"`files'"',".dta","",.)
>>
>> I get
>>
>> . nmerge date using `"`files4'"'
>> One or more filenames after 'using' required
>> (no error though)
>>
>> di `"`files4'"'
>>
>> "file1" "file2"....and so on
>>
>> OR
>>
>> local files2 : list clean files
>> local files3=subinstr(`"`files2'"',".dta","",.)
>>
>> I get
>> . nmerge date using `"`files3'"'
>> 'file2' found where nothing expected
>>
>> di `"`files3'"'
>>
>> file1 file2... and so on
>>
>> Not able to understand why this error. I thought the second option
>> should work out but don't know what's blocking.
>>
>> Abhimanyu
>>
>> On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 9:48 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Your use of -gettoken- is quite illegal. -gettoken- is perhaps most
>>> often used in this form
>>>
>>>  gettoken emname1 emname2 : emname3
>>>
>>> in which the -emname*- are extended macronames. Focus on the "names":
>>> you are feeding -gettoken- with macro contents as the macro
>>> _reference_ `r(files)' will get expanded by Stata before -gettoken-
>>> sees it.
>>>
>>> Nor will r(files) be acceptable to -gettoken-.
>>>
>>> This is an example of will work:
>>>
>>> fs <whatever>
>>> local files `" `r(files)' "'
>>> gettoken first files : files
>>>
>>> In your case the -local- command may be enough. There is no need to
>>> clean up the " " as they are there for a purpose, to bind names with
>>> spaces.
>>>
>>> -fs- is from SSC.
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>> On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 11:22 PM, Abhimanyu Arora
>>> <abhimanyu.arora1987@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I have datasets which I need to merge into a single file. All files
>>>> have a (string) variable that uniquely identifies observations in the
>>>> files.
>>>> There are two user-written commands I found in the SSC—mergeall (Ryan
>>>> Knight) and nmerge(Michael N. Mitchell).
>>>> I am facing problems with both.
>>>>
>>>> In the first case I get a type mismatch error even though I specify
>>>> the string option with force
>>>>
>>>> In the second case I am unable to get my file names (except the first
>>>> file) in a macro.  I used fs(Nick Cox) get the file names in r(files).
>>>> Next I type in  gettoken first `r(files)' : `r(files)'
>>>>
>>>> That shows the following error
>>>>
>>>> _"filename1.dta invalid name
>>>>
>>>> I tried using extended macro function to clean up the quotes but to no
>>>> avail.
>>>
>
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