Playing with Stata dialogs: An enhanced recent file list

Dankwart Plattner
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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.

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