Re: st: use tempfile

[Maarten Buis <maartenlbuis@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Lythgoe, Dan wrote:
> Phil your suggested code makes perfect sense to me but still doesn't seem to quite do the job; I want it to clear the current data set and use the `tempresults' data set instead.

In that case you must -restore- before you -use- the temporary
datafile. That way Stata has nothing to restore to when the program
finishes, so it will leave you temporary datafile as the current data
in memory.

This way you will change your data in a major way. For Stata programs
the standard way for dealing with that is to add the option -clear-,
and you will only change the data if a user explicitly specifies that
option. Schematically, such a program would look something like this:

program define foobar
    syntax <whatever>, [clear <whatever>]

    preserve

    <do stuff>

    restore
    if "`clear'" != "" {
        use `tempresults', clear
    }
end

Hope this helps,
Maarten

--------------------------
Maarten L. Buis
Institut fuer Soziologie
Universitaet Tuebingen
Wilhelmstrasse 36
72074 Tuebingen
Germany


http://www.maartenbuis.nl
--------------------------
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