Merge with frames

[Dario Maimone Ansaldo Patti]

Dear All,

just a very quick question. I have a panel data under a frame named wdi and another one under the name kof. I would like to merge the two datasets. Is it possible to link the two datasets using something like merge m:m.

I tried the following:

frlink m:m country year, frame(kof)

However it does not work. Is there any solution to this? Possibly I am misinterpreting the meaning of frames.

Thanks in advanced,

Dario

[Dario Maimone Ansaldo Patti]

Dear All,

please discard the previous message. I understood that frger should follow frlink.

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

Hi Dario, glad you solved the problem. There is another subtle difference with linking frames, in that it is not like -merge- in the sense that it will not automatically generate unmatched levels of the linking variable from the "using" frame.

clear *
cls

frame create A
frame change A
input byte id
1
2
3
end

frame create B
frame change B
input byte id
2
3
4
end

frame change A
frlink 1:1 id , frame(B) gen(lb)
list

result

     +---------+
     | id   lb |
     |---------|
  1. |  1    . |
  2. |  2    1 |
  3. |  3    2 |
     +---------+

[Dario Maimone Ansaldo Patti]

Leonardo Guizzetti thanks for pointing this out. Indeed, i realized that you do not have a variable which indicates the unmatched data. Maybe this is something to suggest for Stata 18. Nonetheless, while I was not a supporter of frames, i realized that they could be useful, to "open" more datasets at the same time without moving back and forth different Stata pages. So i will try to deeper my knowledge of the command.