call file with abbreviation

[Paula de Souza Leao Spinola]

I have monthly files which names are composed by a standard pattern ("TabelaUnificada_" and respective month/year) followed by a unstandardized pattern (see attachment). I would prefer not to delete the unstandardized pattern from their names once this tells me the exact version of the file I downloaded. There is only one file per month/year.

I would like to zip all files in a loop. The loop below would only work if I manually delete the unstandardized pattern from the file names.

forval i = 2008/2014  {
foreach j in 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12  {

zipfile directory TabelaUnificada_`i'`j', saving(TabelaUnificada_`i'`j', replace)
 
}
}

I get this error when I run the code above:

specify at least one file or folder to include in the zip file
r(198);

end of do-file

r(198);

Is there a way I could call the files making reference only to the standardized pattern of their name?

[Mike Lacy]

Paula, I think you can do what you want by using the macro extended function -dir- to create a local macro containing the names of each of your subdirectories, and then zip each one. See -help extended_fcn-. Does this do what you want?

cd "Dropbox/Pesquis/.... "  // you need to fill in the entire directory name
// Obtain list of subdirectories using a sufficiently detailed wildcard specification
local dirlist: dir "." "TabelaU*"  
foreach d of local dirlist {
   zipfile directory `d', saving("`d'.zip", replace)
}

[Paula de Souza Leao Spinola]

hello Mike Lacy many thanks!

The code you propose gives me the following error:

. local dirlist: dir "." "TabelaU*"  
invalid syntax
r(198);

end of do-file

r(198);

.

[Mike Lacy]

I don't commonly use this extended macro function to get a list of directories, but by looking at the documentation, I'm seeing that it's necessary to indicate that a listing of directories is needed. Take a look at -help extended_fcn-, looking for "Macro extended functions for filenames and file paths."

It appears that something like this might work:

 local dirlist: dir "." dirs "TabelaU*

"