No room for compress

[Claire Cui]

When I try to compress the data by typing "compress", STATA shows "there no room to add more variables because of width An attempt was made to add a variable that would have increased the memory required to store an observation beyond what is currently possible."
This is a little strange since the reason I try to compress is due to the limited memory.

Any one has some ideas about what's going on? Besides, it's strange that the data goes from 200m to more than 1G when I just try to reshape and do some simple calculation.

Thx for your kind help in advance :）

[William Lisowski]

Please see the FAQ linked at the top of this page, specifically section 6 on the preference for real names and how to request your registration name be changed (unless of course Paper is indeed both your given name and family name), and sections 10-12 on providing adequate information about your problem to support diagnosis. It's not necessarily strange that the data goes from 200M to 1G after a reshape and (presumably) the creation of additional variables, simple or not.

Knowing nothing else about your situation, perhaps if you attempt the compress immediately after the reshape, or even before the reshape, you will have greater success.

[Nick Cox]

I endorse William's suggestions.

I guess the reason for the strange message is that Stata needs to generate temporary variables in order to see whether copies of the data in different storage types contain the same information. It's not paradoxical that you need extra memory to do the calculations to see whether memory can be saved.