Using Non-Stata-Format Datasets

The only Non-Stata-Format datasets that Stata can read are plain text files, also known as ASCII files. If you are using a text editing program to type in you dataset, remember to save it in an ASCII format (text format). This is not the format by default. For example if you use Microsoft Word and do not specify the ASCII format (text only format), the saved file will be in a Microsoft Word format which is unreadable by Stata.

Stata can read ASCII (or text-only) data files using the infile and insheet commands. For example, to read a file called ``reactor.raw'' which has five variables (site, capacity, decom, start, close, where site is a string variable with a maximum of 30 characters and the others are numeric) you can use the following command:

 
		 infile str30 site capacity decom start close using reactor

Notice that ``str30'' precedes ``site'' to notify Stata that site is a string (not-numeric) variable with a maximum of 30 characters. In the ASCII file, missing numeric values should be indicated by a period, ``.'', and missing string values by a double quote ``''.

The insheet command is useful for reading data sets constructed by a spreadsheet program. Simply type insheet using datasetname, n comma'' and the data set is read in with variable names and all! The n option tells Stata that the first line contains variable names, and the comma option tells Stata that variables are separated by a comma.