List of long string vars

[Anne Todd]

I am simply looking to get a list of all the different values of a string variable, but some of them are quite long (8-12 words long), as they represent different criminal offense descriptions.

When I -tab- that var, they obviously all show up in a list, but many are cut off (e.g. it will say "Petty theft at.."). Is there a way to either simply print all of them in their entirety (I don't actually need the frequencies that -tab- provides), or to tell Stata to print out the full value in the -tab- output table? I made up some sample data here, if that's helpful.

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str40 chrg_description
"THIS DESCRIPTION IS REALLY WAY TOO LONG FOR STATA"
"SO HERE IS SOME RANDOM DATA THAT I MADE UP AS AN EXAMPLE"
"THIS DESCRIPTION IS REALLY WAY TOO LONG FOR STATA"
​​​​​​​"SO HERE IS SOME RANDOM DATA THAT I MADE UP AS AN EXAMPLE"
end

[Rich Goldstein]

help list

you might want to sort them first and only list if different from the preceding value

[Nick Cox]

There are two problems here, but one is self-inflicted injury. Your example data are truncated on input because str40 truncates the input. You need str56.

. di length("SO HERE IS SOME RANDOM DATA THAT I MADE UP AS AN EXAMPLE")
56

.

Beyond that, tabulate does truncate as you say, as does table.

One solution is groups from the Stata Journal. As "groups" is a common keyword, the best and otherwise unpredictable search term is its identifier in the Stata Journal.

. search st0496, entry

Search of official help files, FAQs, Examples, and Stata Journals

SJ-18-1 st0496_1  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Software update for groups
        (help groups if installed)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q1/18   SJ 18(1):291
        groups exited with an error message if weights were specified;
        this has been corrected

SJ-17-3 st0496  . . . . .  Speaking Stata: Tables as lists: The groups command
        (help groups if installed)  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q3/17   SJ 17(3):760--773
        presents command for listing group frequencies and percents and
        cumulations thereof; for various subsetting and ordering by
        frequencies, percents, and so on; for reordering of columns;
        and for saving tabulated data to new datasets

The write-up is thus at https://www.stata-journal.com/articl...article=st0496 (which will emerge from behind a paywall in a few weeks' time). The gist is accessible at https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...updated-on-ssc

You should install the code from st0496_1 (if you repeat the search command above you will get a clickable link) or there is a copy at ssc install groups. The paywall does not affect the possibility of installing the code.

groups can be as plain as you want:

. groups chrg

  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |                                         chrg_description   Freq.   Percent      %<= |
  |-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
  | SO HERE IS SOME RANDOM DATA THAT I MADE UP AS AN EXAMPLE       2     50.00    50.00 |
  |        THIS DESCRIPTION IS REALLY WAY TOO LONG FOR STATA       2     50.00   100.00 |
  +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

. 

. groups chrg, show(none) noheader
  +----------------------------------------------------------+
  | SO HERE IS SOME RANDOM DATA THAT I MADE UP AS AN EXAMPLE |
  |        THIS DESCRIPTION IS REALLY WAY TOO LONG FOR STATA |
  +----------------------------------------------------------+

.
This answer is the same as Rich Goldstein's, insofar as groups uses list as its display engine.

[Anne Todd]

Thank you both!