Re: st: How to re-program -save9- for Stata 13?

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

As I understand it, Strategy 2 is doomed in a strict sense. -saveold-
will not take you that far back and there is no -saveveryold- or
equivalent that you want.

Strategy 1 is to a degree programmable, but you need a really good
understanding of Stata and Mata programming. In generality, you have
to decide what to do with long strings, etc., etc. and to document
that. Pessimistically, Stata 13 datasets will _not_ all fit in Stata 9
and there's no fudging that fact.

But what's the context here? One might guess that locally some people
have access to Stata 13 and some just Stata 9, so you want to heave
datasets back and forth, and 9 to 13 is easy and 13 to 9 the problem.
I guess I would just start with something like -outsheet- or -export
excel-  as intermediary as something a lot simpler than writing a new
program. Also, what's so magic about 9 as compared with anything else
not reachable by -saveold-?

For completeness I have to add that -save9- was discussed in earlier
postings on the list by Joerg Luedicke and myself.

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2011-04/msg00654.html

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2011-10/msg00928.html

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2011-10/msg01158.html

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2011-10/msg01253.html

At that time I was left puzzled about the claims on its behalf, and I
guess that would still be true. I think Joerg felt the same.

Nick
njcoxstata@gmail.com


On 14 October 2013 13:54, Marco Ercolani <m.g.ercolani@bham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Dear Statalisters,
>
> I am asking for suggestions on how I can re-program -save9- so that it will work in Stata 13.
> In other words, so it will save data in a Stata 9 format from within Stata 13.
> I can think of two possible strategies to achieve this within Stata 13:
>
> Strategy 1: Edit the contents of the dataset so they conform to Stata 9 protocols, save the file,
> then edit the the file header so that it appears to have been saved by Stata 9.
>
> Strategy 2: Use an existing save facility in Stata 13 that would allow me to impose limits on the
> data so it respects Stata 9 protocols. Does such a save facility exist?
>
> Any help on the above two approaches or helpful suggestions for a "third way" would be welcome.
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