Seeking .ado for -epctile-

[Rebecca Boehm]

Hi all,
I'm seeking the .ado file for the command -epctile-. It does not seem to be available on the repec site and not supported by Stata 14.1. At least I cannot install easily on my remote desktop situation.

I checked on the developers personal website for the .ado but I can longer find the link. Here is his site: http://web.missouri.edu/~kolenikovs/stata
If someone has the .ado can you please send it to me? Alternatively I am looking for instructions on how to get this command from my own version of Stata 13.1/IC on my personal computer desktop (not the remote one). TIA Rebecca

[William Lisowski]

There is an updated link to this in the output of search epctile . Using Stata's search command is always the best place to start when looking for a user-written command.

[Rebecca Boehm]

Hi William,

Thanks for your fast reply. Can you please tell me which weblink links to the actual .ado file that can be saved as an .ado and then sent via email to my remote desktop administrator? I used search epctile from my version of Stata on my personal desktop and I cannot find the .ado that way. This page does not return a link for epctile: http://staskolenikov.net/stata/, if that's the one to which you were referring.

Thanks,
Rebecca

[William Lisowski]

Installing a Stata add-on package is best done through the standard means if at all possible. To do so on your remote desktop depends on having write access to the directory identified as PLUS by the sysdir command; you can see from the output below that on my Mac this is intended to be a subdirectory of my home directory, in which I of course have write access.

. sysdir
   STATA:  /Applications/Stata/
    BASE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/base/
    SITE:  /Applications/Stata/ado/site/
    PLUS:  ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/plus/
PERSONAL:  ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/personal/
OLDPLACE:  ~/ado/

So if that looks hopeful on your remote desktop, there are two approaches. First, the standard approach for finding and installing packages over the internet:

1. search epctile
2. click on the link to epctile in the Viewer window, replacing the contents of the Viewer window with epctile package detail
   • note that there are two ado files and a sthlp file to be installed for the epctile package
3. click on the click here to install link in that Viewer window

The slightly less standard approach is to issue the following Stata command, which is just what clicking on the link in #3 above does

net install epctile.pkg

If you lack write permission in your PLUS directory, I'm guessing you also lack write permission in your PERSONAL directory, so then then the next best approach is to copy the three files from the e and f subdirectories of the PLUS directory on your personal desktop and have your remote desktop administrator stick them into the those subdirectories of the directory you previously identified as your PLUS directory on your remote desktop.

[Rebecca Boehm]

Thanks William.

search epctile

and

net install epctile.pkg

do not work on the remote desktop for the reasons you listed. I am not allowed internet access through the system so each time I want to install a new program that is user written I have to import the .ado file through my administrator. Usually I can find those user written programs on the repec website but for some reason -epctile- is not available there.

How do I copy the three files from the e and f subdirectories on my personal desktop so that I can then import the appropriate files to my system?

Thanks!

[Mike Lacy]

If the Stata installation on your remote machine allows you to change your adopath, and also allows Stata to access a local drive (e.g., a flash drive, or some virtual drive on that remote system that you as a user get.)

1) Install the program of interest on your own computer, which will put its programs into the appropriate folders in the PLUS location.
2) Copy all the files in your PLUS location to that flash or other drive, let's say to a folder called e:/MyProgs
3) On the remote Stata, with that flash drive plugged in, tell it to include that folder in your adopath:

adopath + "e:/MyProgs" // or whatever your flash drive is called on the remote

4) Run the program on the remote as desired, and its Stata should happily find your collection of ado files.

In fact, re step 1), you could copy all the programs in the PLUS location to your flash drive. This approach would get you out of the administrator/middle-person nuisance for good. I have not done the preceding, but it ought to work.
See -help sysdir-

[William Lisowski]

Usually I can find those user written programs on the repec website but for some reason -epctile- is not available there.

Because the author of epctile chose not to post the package to RePEc site, but instead (as the output of search epctile shows) to http://staskolenikov.net/stata and then registered that site with Statacorp.

How do I copy the three files from the e and f subdirectories on my personal desktop so that I can then import the appropriate files to my system

This is an operating system question, the copying doesn't occur within Stata. The generic answer is "the same way you copy any other file on your desktop system". Having said that, there's an extra wrinkle because the PLUS directory may be within a directory "hidden" from normal display in the Finder (Mac) or the Windows equivalent, and you have to know how to work your way around that limitation. On my Mac, the answer is to open a Finder window, from the Go menu select Go to Folder, in the dialog box that opens enter ~/Library/Application Support/Stata/ado/plus/ (copied from the Stata output window after running sysdir), and in the Finder window that opens, find the three files in the e and f subdirectories, and do the usual thing to copy (not move) each file into a more convenient location.

An alternative is to download the files directly from http://staskolenikov.net/stata. Knowing their names from step 2 of post #4, you can open each of the following URLs and save what's displayed to text files with the given names.

http://staskolenikov.net/stata/epctile.ado
http://staskolenikov.net/stata/epctile.sthlp
http://staskolenikov.net/stata/FormXLevels.ado

[Rebecca Boehm]

William, the path to epctile.do was exactly what I needed! But when I typed in just http://staskolenikov.net/stata/ I could not see the link to epctile.ado and that's when I came to this list for help. I didn't realize that the file path to epctile.ado from his website would be so direct like that. I probably should have tried, but I didn't even think of it. When you land on his main site there is no directly link to epctile.

Thank you! And thank you Mike Lacy for your advice. I think what you have provided will be useful if I run into more problems like this.

Best,
Rebecca

[David Radwin]

For future reference, here is how to install this user-written program: https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...45#post1709545