st: data import/varname problem

[Jeph Herrin <stata@spandrel.net>]

I have a dataset that comes to me in two files. Both are comma separated 
files: one is the header (list of variable names) and the other is the 
data. My problem is to combine the two, so that I have variable names on 
the data.

If the files were smaller, I would probably just open both in Excel and 
insert the single row in the header file onto the top row of the data 
file, save, and then -insheet- the result into Stata. However in this 
case the number of columns (329) exceeds the maximum allowed by Excel. A 
second option would be to use a text editor to insert the header on the 
top line, but the dataset is almost 5GB, and even -vim- seems to be 
choking on it (it crashes after 5 or so minutes, something I have never 
seen -vim- do before).

I can -insheet- both files into Stata, so I have two Stata datasets, one 
containing data and the other containing variable names. But, having 
done that, I can't figure out a way to use the latter to name the 
variables in the former.

Any tricks I'm missing? This is US government issued data, so I can't 
ask for a more intelligent delivery arrangement.

thanks,
Jeph


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