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Re: st: Routine for merging many text-files
From
Mani Subramani <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: st: Routine for merging many text-files
Date
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 03:08:09 -0500
If I understand your problem right, you are trying to combine about
100 text files with identical structure for analysis. As Nick
suggested, the 'append' command should do the job within Stata
However, this can be very simply accomplished in Linux or Windows
before submitting the job to Stata. If you are using a Windows
machine, the following command from the command line (within the
directory where you have the files):
copy /a *.txt combined.txt
will combine the whole batch of files into one text file which you can
import and append to your dataset.
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 6:02 AM, Simon Falck <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have about 100 text files that I want to merge in to a longitudinal datab= ase and wonder if there is a routine that I can apply to ease this work.
>
> The text-files have different periods but the same datastructure, which is = a wide format that looks something like this,
>
> Id y1 y2 y3
> 1 10 30 40
> 2 11 31 41
> ...and so on..
>
> If I would apply the standard procedure to create the database the script w= ould look something like this for two text-files, (as an example but would = look the same for the 100 text-files)
>
> *Insert dataset 1 from textfile and save as .dta insheet using "C:\User\dataset1", tab reshape long y, i(id) j(year) rename y var1 save "C:\User\dataset1.dta"
>
> *Insert dataset 2 from textfile and save as .dta insheet using "C:\User\dataset2", tab reshape long y, i(id) j(year) rename y var2 save "C:\User\dataset2.dta"
>
> *Merge dataset 1 and 2 to key-file containing joint id=B4s.
> use "C:\User\id.dta"
> merge 1:m id year using "C:\User\dataset1.dta"
> drop _merge
> merge 1:m id year using "C:\User\dataset2.dta"
> drop _merge
>
> The resulting database would look something like this,
>
> Id year var1 var2
> 1 1 10 100
> 1 2 15 75
> 1 3 20 65
> 2 1 11 112
> 2 2 17 80
> 3 1 36 110
> ...and so on..
>
> Since I have about 100 text-files that (1) needs to be converted into .dta,=
> (2) reshaped into a long-format, (3) rename variables, and (4) merged into= a joint database, I wonder if someone know how I could write a routine to = ease this work which otherwise is repetitive and result in a very large .do= file.
>
> Thanks in advance
> Simon
>
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
--
Mani Subramani, [email protected]
Information and Decision Sciences Department
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455.
612-624-3522
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/