Ieboilsave

ieboilsave is is still in it is beta version, meaning that the current version is still a very early version that we are using for experimentation. The beta version still works and can be used, however, it might not yet be very useful and new version might include dramatic changes. This article describes what the intended use case is, but all functionality might not yet be implemented.

This article is meant to describe use cases, work flow and the reasoning used when developing the commands. For instructions on how to use the command specifically in Stata and for a complete list of the options available, see the help files by typing help ieboilsave in Stata. This command is a part of the package ietoolkit, to install all the commands in this package including this command, type ssc install ietoolkit in Stata.

Intended use cases

The use case is very similar to ieboilstart as both commands help the user by including best practice boilerplate code without having to type it up manually. Instead of running boilerplate code in the very beginning of a master do-file as ieboilstart does, ieboilsave is meant to be run immediately before saving a data set.

ieboilsave runs test that are a good practice to run each time before you save a data set, and it stores meta information about your data set, when it was last saved, which version of Stata was used to create it, which is the ID variable etc. attached to the data set using Stata's built in char command.

ieboilsave tests that the ID variable is still uniquely and fully identifying, and can perform tests that a specified list of variables for example have no missing values or a are valid dummy variables. These tests make sure that no changes to the code accidentally invalidates the ID variable, create missing values in variables that should never be missing etc.

For a complete list if tests that ieboilsave can perform, see the help file in Stata.

Instructions

These instructions are meant to help you understand how to use the command. For technical instructions on how to implement the command in Stata see the help files by typing help ieboilsave in Stata.

Run ieboilsave on the line immediately before you save the data set. ieboilsave is meant to be used before saving data sets to be used for analysis and dissemination. It is probably not worth the effort to use ieboilsave before each intermediate data set that you save for your own convenience.

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This article is part of the topic ietoolkit