Re: st: adding variables to a new data file

[David Epstein <david.l.epstein@gmail.com>]

The larger problem is that I'm trying to get a lot of variable out of
Stata to Excel. I've posted previously about a bug in the Excel parser
that won't allow you to export to a file that has a macro button, so
that's one issue.

And I've tried to just list the variables I want to export, by
constructing a local macro called varlist. But then I run into Stata's
limit of 244 characters for a string, so I can't do it that way. Oh,
and when I try to export the variables all at one time to the Excel
sheet, I run into a limit on the number of variables that can be
exported at one time, so I have to do it in shifts, which costs me a
lot in export time.

So I've run into a number of frustrations trying to do what should be
a simple task. In general, Stata might make a little more effort to
make it easy for the program to interact with other external programs.

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 5:37 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> My point is the same. Just to add that there's a convenience command
> on SSC, -savesome-.
>
> Nick
>
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Steve Nakoneshny <scnakone@ucalgary.ca> wrote:
>
>> It isn't clear to me why you would need a loop in the first place to identify your variables of interest. Is the size of your dataset a limiting factor due to your version of Stata? Can you not simply keep a running tally of the variables you want to keep and export them en masse?  Perhaps through the judicious use of a do file?
>
> On 2013-02-12, at 3:21 PM, David Epstein wrote:
>
>>> This must be a really easy question to answer, but I'm feeling
>>> stumped. I have a data set with a large number of variables in it. I
>>> want to create a new data set with a subset of those variables, with
>>> the exact variables to be exported being read off a loop a few
>>> variables at a time.
>>>
>>> So for instance I first want to export the key identifying variable,
>>> which in my case is date. So I will:
>>>
>>> preserve
>>> keep date
>>> save temp, replace
>>> restore
>>>
>>> Then I'll loop through my loop once and get the names of five
>>> variables I want to add to temp, call them v1 v2 v3 v4 v5. The next
>>> time through, I'll get variables v6 through v10, and so on until I've
>>> added, say 50 variables to temp.
>>>
>>> My question is, what do my loops look like? Am I merging each time
>>> through? Keeping, say, date v1 v2 v3 v4 v5, merging, then restoring? I
>>> could, but that seems like it could take a while to keep preserving
>>> and restoring all the time. Plus, I keep having to save the temp file
>>> and then switch back to the master data set. Isn't there a command
>>> that says "take these variables from my current data set and add them
>>> to another data set?"
>
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