How to store a mean value in a local macro and then save it in another file?

stata local-variables stata-macros
Buras picture Buras · May 28, 2013 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

I have a Stata file file1.dta and one of the variables is income. I need to calculate average_income, assign it to a local macro, and store in a different Stata file, New.dta.

I have tried the following in a do file:

#delimit;
clear;
set mem 700m;

use file1.dta;
local average_income = mean income; 

use New.dta;
gen avincome = average_income;

However, it does not work.

Answer

Nick Cox picture Nick Cox · May 28, 2013

This overlaps with your other post, namely How to retrieve data from multiple Stata files?. You don't say why you think 

use file1.dta;
local average_income = mean income;

will work, but the second line is just fantasy syntax. There are various ways to calculate the mean of a variable, the most common being to use summarize and pick up the mean from r(mean).

You should probably delete this question: it serves no long-term purpose.

Related questions

Convert a dta file to csv without Stata software

Is there a way to convert a dta file to a csv? I do not have a version of Stata installed on my computer, so I cannot do something like: File --> "Save as csv"

Read More
How to count the number of observations in R like Stata command count

aaa<- data.frame(sex=c(1,1,2,2,1,1), group1=c(1,2,1,2,2,2),group2=c("A","B","A","B","A","B")) stata command: count if sex==1 & group1==2 count if sex==1 & group2=="A" count counts the number of observations that satisfy the specified …

Read More
Loop over string variables in R

When programming in Stata I often find myself using the loop index in the programming. For example, I'll loop over a list of the variables nominalprice and realprice: local list = "nominalprice realprice" foreach i of local list { summarize `i' twoway (…

Read More