Hi again.
Thanks for your advice Allin and Henrique.
Allin - I've tried your suggestion. When the traditional file is created it
does create 2 files - dat and hdr. Then I have saved a plain text file
named mydata.lbl (in exactly the format you suggested) in the same user
folder with the newly created ones. But, when I re-open mydata.dat it
doesn't open with the descriptive labels - it's just the variable names as
before. I think gretl isn't reading the text file. Do you have
suggestions?
Henrique - thanks. I have tried this and it works well. However, I have
185 variables so I am trying to give the variables descriptive labels all at
once rather than enter them one at a time. I have tried to copy and paste a
script with all 185 variables but I can't paste into gretl from outside. Do
you have suggestions on that?
Thanks so much!!
Shaianne
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 3:08 PM, Henrique <henrique.coelho(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Allin and Shaianne,
I have another suggestion: why don't you use a script file? I use this
procedure very often and I think it helps a lot:
<script>
open mydata.xls
setinfo gdp60 -d "GDP per adult, 1960"
setinfo gdp85 -d "GDP per adult, 1985"
save mydata.gdt --gzipped
</script>
I hope this helps ;)
Henrique
2009/10/1 Allin Cottrell <cottrell(a)wfu.edu>
> On Thu, 1 Oct 2009, Shaianne Osterreich wrote:
>
> > I am new to gretl and I am sorry if this is too rudimentary a question.
>
> Welcome to the gretl list, and no, your question is fine.
>
> > I am trying to append my data set (already imported) with
> > another file that contains the descriptive labels. I know how
> > to do it one variable at a time in the gretl console but is
> > there some way to add all the labels for all the variables at
> > once?
>
> You can do this but it's a bit of an "expert trick"; perhaps we
> should write this up in the "Cheat sheet" chapter of the Gretl
> User's Guide.
>
> The first thing to do is save your dataset in the "traditional"
> format of ESL, gretl's ancestor. Do this in a script or in the
> gretl console:
>
> open mydata
> store mydata.dat --traditional
>
> This will create either two or three files: mydata.dat (plain text
> data only), mydata.hdr (basic info on how to read the data) and,
> possibly, mydata.lbl, which will contain descriptive strings for
> the variables, if any.
>
> Now either edit or create mydata.lbl to add the labels you want:
> mydata.lbl should be a plain text file, each line of which
> has the name of a variable followed by its label, e.g.
>
> gdp60 GDP per adult, 1960
> gdp85 GDP per adult, 1985
> gdpgrow Average growth of GDP, 1960 to 1985
>
> (with no quotation marks or special punctuation).
>
> Now open the "traditional" dataset in gretl
>
> open mydata.dat
>
> The labels should be in place; you can now re-save the dataset in
> the current standard gretl format.
>
> Allin Cottrell
>
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