NAME

Parse::Stata::DtaReader - read Stata 8 and Stata 10 .dta files

OVERVIEW

This module reads Stata 8 and Stata 10 .dta files.

The API is object oriented: create a new instance of Parse::Stata::DtaReader by providing a handle to the .dta file, and then use attributes and methods of that object to obtain the data.

SYNOPSIS

Look at the source code of dta2csv and dta2sql for working code examples.

Open a .dta file

    open my $fileHandle, '<', 'test.dta';
    
    my $dta = new Parse::Stata::DtaReader($fileHandle);

Retrieve general information

Number of variables and observations:

    print "$dta->{nvar} variables; $dta->{nobs} observations\n";

Variable names and types:

    print join( ',', @{ $dta->{varlist} } ) . "\n";
    
    for (my $i = 0; $i < $dta->{nvar}; ++$i) {
        print "$dta->{varlist}[$i] has SQL type " .
            $dta->sqlType($i) . "\n";
    }

Retrieve data

    while ( my @a = $dta->readRow ) {
        print join( ',', @a ) . "\n";
    }

SOURCES

Stata .dta format specification from: http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?dta_114 http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?dta_113

BUGS

It works for me, but has not been fully tested.

All Stata missing values will be converted into a perl undef, losing the information about the type of missing value.

NO WARRANTY

This code comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY of any kind.

AUTHOR

Copyright 2007, 2008, 2014 Reckon LLP and Franck Latrémolière. http://www.reckon.co.uk/staff/franck/

LICENCE

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl.