st: how to show "dots" in a loop?

[László Sándor <sandorl@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I try to do a simple thing in Stata 11 MP for Windows: demean and
detrend a panel. For this I need to loop over all individuals'
subsamples. However, I finish quickly with a 1% subsample of my data,
while it is suspiciously slow with 10% (of any operations, the loop
should be linear in this regard as long as the system has enough
memory).

I would now like to report something every iteration, but I would
avoid seeing thousands of lines filled with this, esp. in my log. Long
story short: can I somehow print dots as wrapper commands like
bootstrap do?

(Formatted, easy-to-count dots would be the best, but if those are not
simple to copy from a "dottable" command, I could live with a flood of
dots to judge how fast I'm going through the data.)

Thanks,

Laszlo
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