Stata/Settings

Text Editor

• Stata 11 includes a do-file editor with syntax highlighting.
• If you are not using Stata 11, you may want to use an external text editor with syntax highlighting. The list of external text editors are described here (http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/t/textEditors.html)

Customize Stata

Memory

Stata loads the data in memory. If you are dealing with large datasets, you may have the following error message : no room for more observations . In that case, you just need to increase the amount of memory used by Stata. The maximum depends on your computer.

. set mem 100m * gives 100 megabyte
. set mem 1g * gives 1 gigabyte

In Stata 12, these commands are not necessary because memory is managed automatically. Stata will inform you of this change any time you run the set mem command, using this message:

   set memory ignored.
       Memory no longer needs to be set in modern Statas; memory adjustments are performed on the fly automatically.

If you want to know more, just type mem

. mem
Total memory:   105M
Memory in use:    6k   0%
Room for 867k more observations
Room for 570k more variables (4 byte)

Profile.do

• profile.do is executed each time you open Stata. It is a simple do-file which should be located in the same directory as the .exe (Windows) or .app (Mac OS) file. You can define your ado files directory and store them in profile.do

*! profile.do
sysdir set PERSONAL "/Applications/Stata/ado/personal/"
sysdir set PLUS "/Applications/Stata/ado/plus/"
sysdir set OLDPLACE "/Applications/Stata/ado/oldplace/"

set mem 100m
set more on, permanently

System Parameters

• query gives all the system parameter
• help limits gives all the limits (ie maximum number of observations, maximum number of variable, maximum length of a string, etc).
• sysdir gives all the ado directories :

. sysdir
   STATA:  /Applications/Stata/
 UPDATES:  /Applications/Stata/ado/updates/
    BASE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/base/
    SITE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/site/
    PLUS:  /Applications/Stata/ado/plus/
PERSONAL:  /Applications/Stata/ado/personal/
OLDPLACE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/oldplace/

• about gives information about your version of Stata

. about

Intercooled Stata 9.2 for Macintosh
Born 20 Jul 2007
Copyright (C) 1985-2007

Single-user Stata for Macintosh perpetual license:
       Serial number: --------
         Licensed to: --------

User-written ado files

• SSC website : a website that includes user-written Stata commands.
• ssc whatsnew : a command showing what's new in SSC
• ssc des : a command describing a user written command.

. ssc des ivreg2 

• ssc install : a command to install new commands from SSC

. ssc install ivreg2

• ssc des a : a command describing all the SSC commands which names begins with 'a'

If you want to find new ado files, just use the findit command. For instance if you want to find new command about poverty, type :

. findit poverty