Opening file in .dat format

[Sigrid Romier]

Hi,

I am currently using the 16th version of STATA on MacOS. I want to open a 4GB document that has the form '.dat'; when I open it with 'StataSE' it only gives me a new STATA window (without any data on it) and a do-file (with the name of the document) with only 'VOL1' in it, but there is nothing I can do with it:

. do "/Users/sigrid/Desktop/HKU/SVM/polodump20181128.dat"

. VOL1
> 7HDR1polo183340CF17 000100 18334 18334 Sybase 0CF17 HDR2F 0204803 polo
> 00000000002000012803 0000002EOF1polo183340CF17 0
> 00100 18334 18334 ŤSybase 0CF17 EOF2F 0204803 polo
> 00000000002000012803 0000002EOF3VOL1 7 �I?
> HTSU�dK��H���� �� ��Nl2f �<<$<x`
command VOL1 is unrecognized
r(199);

end of do-file

r(199);


It would really help me if someone knows how to open such a file on Stata;

Many thanks,

Sigrid

[Jorrit Gosens]

Do you know who or what program created the file?
The extension itself does not make that very clear.

Also, you are specifying 'do' in the command you specify above. With a 4GB file it's more likely i's a dataset that you want to open or import.

[Marcos Almeida]

Maybe this thread will be helpful.

[Sigrid Romier]

Many thanks for your answer, I had to figure out indeed the program used to create them before trying to import the file.

[Jorrit Gosens]

If it is easy enough to figure that out, then yes.
Otherwise do also see the link posted by Marcos, and try to see if the file is data stored as plain text. Try opening in notepad or importing in excel, maybe that will give you the info already.