R devel - Jan 2014 - Stata support in package foreign

As you know, Stata support in 'foreign' was frozen a while back at Stata
version 12. R-core has received a request from a grad student to 'give 
top priority' to supporting Stata 13.  That is not going to happen, not 
least because none of us has access to Stata.

However, according to Stata's documentation both Stata 12 and 13 use 
format 115, so foreign::read.dta should be able to read Stata 13 files. 
  It would be helpful to know if that is the case.

Second, Stata document reading R's POSIXct date-times into Stata at 
http://www.stata.com/manuals13/ddatetime.pdf page 10 using format %tC. 
The description there of 'UTC-adusted seconds' is ambiguous, but what is
said on page 2 suggests %tc is correct.  Could someone please try 
reading a recent R date-time into Stata (one since July 2012, the last 
leap second) and see which format reads it correctly.

Finally, PR#15517 is about undocumented details of a change in the way 
Stata saves dates.  It would be helpful if someone could send me two 
example Stata 12/13 files, one containing a column of dates and one 
containing a column of date-times together with a printout of what Stata 
interprets them as.

Thanks for any help,

BDR

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

On 23/01/2014 08:21, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> As you know, Stata support in 'foreign' was frozen a while back at
Stata
> version 12. R-core has received a request from a grad student to 'give
> top priority' to supporting Stata 13.  That is not going to happen, not
> least because none of us has access to Stata.
>
> However, according to Stata's documentation both Stata 12 and 13 use
> format 115, so foreign::read.dta should be able to read Stata 13 files.
>   It would be helpful to know if that is the case.
>
> Second, Stata document reading R's POSIXct date-times into Stata at
> http://www.stata.com/manuals13/ddatetime.pdf page 10 using format %tC.
> The description there of 'UTC-adusted seconds' is ambiguous, but
what is
> said on page 2 suggests %tc is correct.  Could someone please try
> reading a recent R date-time into Stata (one since July 2012, the last
> leap second) and see which format reads it correctly.
>
> Finally, PR#15517 is about undocumented details of a change in the way
> Stata saves dates.  It would be helpful if someone could send me two
> example Stata 12/13 files, one containing a column of dates and one
> containing a column of date-times together with a printout of what Stata
> interprets them as.
Thanks to George Vega Yon I have the Stata 12 files I need.
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> BDR
>

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

FWIW, documentation .dta from Stata 13::

http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?dta

"Stata 13 writes what are
    known as .dta format-117 files and can read all formats of files that
    have ever been released.  The recent history of .dta formats is


        Format        Current as of
        ---------------------------------------
          117         Stata 13 
          116         internal; never released
          115         Stata 12
          114         Stata 10
          113         Stata  8
        ---------------------------------------


    Format 117 is documented below..."



--
View this message in context:
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Stata-support-in-package-foreign-tp4684022p4685037.html
Sent from the R devel mailing list archive at Nabble.com.