Duplicates in very large dataset

[Federico Nutarelli]

Hi all,

I am trying to merge two huge datasets.
To do so, I am generating a unique identifier as

gen id_mas = _n

However, when I check for duplicates, stata found that there are though the numbers displayed are different.
For instance:

as you can see the number displayed is 2.33e+07 but it is precisely 23309572. The number below is displayed again as 2.33e+07 but it's 23309514. So they are uniquely defined but stata seems to care only about the rounded value.
How can I solve this issue and tell stata that these are two separate numbers?

Thank you

[Hemanshu Kumar]

Duplicate thread. Interested readers can follow the discussion here: https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...-large-dataset

[Andrew Musau]

From -help precision- you have

Floats can store up to 16,777,215 exactly

So you are asking for trouble if the storage type is float.