Playing with Stata dialogs: An enhanced recent file list

Dankwart Plattner
Additional contact information
Dankwart Plattner: KfW Frankfurt

No 4, German Stata Users' Group Meetings 2004 from Stata Users Group

Abstract: Stata dialogs are somewhat cumbersome and difficult to implement. However, they are also powerful and helpful, especially when used together with ado-files. With the help of the latter, dialogs can even be sort of dynamic, as the example I present shows. To my knowledge, this has never been done before. Stata lacks a recent file list. It is replicated and enhanced with this start-up-dialog, which presents the user with three lists of data files opened before (recent 5, 5 most popular, all) and allows one to chose among them to open one or select a file never used before, open it and add it to the file lists. In addition, one can select a proper log file to use with the opened file and set the memory needed to open the data file (the dialog proposes a suitable value). The user may also enter a description for each file opened in order to have a better overview over her projects. The dialog may be most useful on start-up but can be called also during a current session. It closes open files (and saves them on request) in order to open the selected ones. The dialog presented shows how to exchange values with ado-files (back and forth). It also shows how one can debug dialog scripts and programs, albeit in a very rough manner only. Some limitations of Stata dialogs are also discussed. Several additions and enhancements to the dialog are possible.

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in German Stata Users' Group Meetings 2004 from Stata Users Group
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F Baum ().