"Use" command

[Rita Neves]

Hi all,

I am a new user of STATA and struggling somewhat with a few basic issues.
Sorry for these beginners questions, but I just don't find answers in the manuals.. What is wrong with my use command bellow? The dataset name cannot have spaces? Or the location of the file has to be defined earlier?

use U:\1.harmonize datasets\Current files\2001-08 160218 1331

Thanks!!!

[Nick Cox]

From the help for use

If your filename contains embedded spaces, remember to enclose it in double quotes.

As a new user of Stata [NB; FAQ Advice #18] you will need to use the help a lot. I am an old user of Stata and still look at the help every day.

[Rita Neves]

Thanks a lot, Nick!

[Richard Williams]

As a sidelight, I try to avoid embedded spaces for this reason. You don’t always have control over this though.

[Nick Cox]

Older people here grew up with filenaming systems in which spaces were not allowed any way (and in the case of MS-DOS an 8.3 pattern filename.ext was the maximum any way)!

[Rita Neves]

Thanks for the hints. I had to copy paste from Excel- more than 600 labels, so i really didn't like the other options.