file not Stata format r(610), in Stata/SE 14.1

[Daniel Harenberg]

Hi,

use ppfad

returns

file ppfad.dta not Stata format
r(610);

I use

Stata/SE 14.1 for Unix (Linux 64-bit x86-64)
Revision 20 Jul 2016

dir shows the file ppfad.dta. The file is provided from an official institution and should work. I am a newbie and might miss elementary things, but googling didn't help. I am very grateful for any help.

[Nick Cox]

Conversely, we can't see the file. Show us the results of

type ppfad.dta

If the results are lengthy, the first few lines should be enough.

[Daniel Harenberg]

Correct, I can't provide the file.

type ppfad.dta

returns only many pages of dots:

.................................................. .................................................. ...............................
> .................................................. .................................................. .............................
> .................................................. .................................................. .............................
---more---

which seems to go on endlessly (I had to break). Looks strange, doesn't it?
EDIT: Could it be related to my Linux OS? I am using (K)Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

[Jesse Wursten]

Hi,

use ppfad

returns

I use

dir shows the file ppfad.dta. The file is provided from an official institution and should work. I am a newbie and might miss elementary things, but googling didn't help. I am very grateful for any help.

Are you sure it's a stata file?

[Richard Williams]

Is the file accessible somewhere where other people could download it?

If you downloaded you might download again in case it got corrupted.

[Nick Cox]

I don't think this is an OS problem. Stata .dta files don't start like that.

You could try looking at it in a decent text editor or within Stata using the hexdump command, but my bet is that it is not an (uncorrupted) .dta file.

[Daniel Harenberg]

Turns out data was corrupted... Thanks a lot!