ARCHIVED: In Stata, how do I read an ASCII text file?

The Stata infile command reads a space- or comma-delimited ASCII text file. The infix command imports a fixed ASCII file without a delimiter.

Suppose you want to read the space-delimited ASCII file temp.txt saved in the directory c:\data. The file contains five variables (v1, v2, v3, v4, and v5). Use the infile command as follows:

  infile v1 v2 v3 v4 v5 using c:\data\temp.txt, clear

The clear option removes the existing data set in memory and reads in a new data set.

If a text file does not use a delimiter and instead distinguishes data items by their column locations, it is called the fixed format. The following command reads a string variable id from columns 1-7, a numeric variable stat from columns 11-13, and math from columns 14-16:

  infix str id 1-7 stat 11-13 math 14-16 c:\data\temp2.txt, clear