When my loop*reaches the 101st iteration, it fails

[Meerim Asanbekova]

Hi everyone,

I'm encountering an issue with a loop in Stata where the loop stops at the 100th iteration and throws an error message. It seems like there's a limitation on the number of timers that can be used, which is set to 100 by default. When my loop reaches the 101st iteration, it fails.

Is there a way to increase this limit from 100 to a higher value, like 300, so that my loop can run without interruption?

Thanks in advance for your help!

local listx h_gender hh_age hh_maritst edu1 edu2 edu3 edu4 hh_size child0_5 urban land_size female_hh 
*local index spi zscore delta
local depv d_migr d_migr_internal d_migr_abroad n_migr n_migr_abroad n_migr_internal sh_migr sh_migr_abroad sh_migr_internal totremit d_remit d_tremit
local j 1
local i 1
foreach y in `depv' {
foreach ind in `index' {
forvalue d=1(1)18{

timer on `j'
    local opt= cond(`i'==1, "replace", "append")
    local listx "h_gender hh_age hh_maritst edu1 edu2 edu3 edu4 hh_size child0_5 urban land_size female_hh"
    quietly xtreg `y' did`d'_`ind' treated`d'_`ind' `listx' i.year,  fe vce (cluster coato)                       
outreg2 using "C:\Users\User\Desktop\corrtables\DiD.xls"
    local i=`i'+1
    local opt= cond(`i'==1, "replace", "append")

timer off `j'
timer list `j'
display as text "Estimation for `ind'" "Elapsed time in minutes: " as result %3.2f `=(`r(t`j')')/60'
timer clear `j'
local j=`j'+1
}
}
}

[Nick Cox]

Indeed. I didn't know there was such a limit, but it's documented in the manual (a.k.a. the PDF documentation), either alongside your Stata or at www.stata.com/manuals/ptimer.pdf

[Andrew Musau]

You can clear the timer after every 100 iterations. Consider this:

sysuse auto, clear
local j 0
forval i=1/120{
    local ++j
    local timerclear= cond(`j'==1, "timer clear", "")
    `timerclear'
    timer on `j'
    display "THIS IS ITERATION `i'; TIMER= `j'"
    regress mpg weight
    timer off `j'
    timer list `j'
    local j= cond(!mod(`i',100), 0, `j')
}

Res.:

THIS IS ITERATION 99; TIMER= 99

      Source |       SS           df       MS      Number of obs   =        74
-------------+----------------------------------   F(1, 72)        =    134.62
       Model |   1591.9902         1   1591.9902   Prob > F        =    0.0000
    Residual |  851.469256        72  11.8259619   R-squared       =    0.6515
-------------+----------------------------------   Adj R-squared   =    0.6467
       Total |  2443.45946        73  33.4720474   Root MSE        =    3.4389

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         mpg | Coefficient  Std. err.      t    P>|t|     [95% conf. interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
      weight |  -.0060087   .0005179   -11.60   0.000    -.0070411   -.0049763
       _cons |   39.44028   1.614003    24.44   0.000     36.22283    42.65774
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  99:      0.01 /        1 =       0.0050
THIS IS ITERATION 100; TIMER= 100

      Source |       SS           df       MS      Number of obs   =        74
-------------+----------------------------------   F(1, 72)        =    134.62
       Model |   1591.9902         1   1591.9902   Prob > F        =    0.0000
    Residual |  851.469256        72  11.8259619   R-squared       =    0.6515
-------------+----------------------------------   Adj R-squared   =    0.6467
       Total |  2443.45946        73  33.4720474   Root MSE        =    3.4389

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         mpg | Coefficient  Std. err.      t    P>|t|     [95% conf. interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
      weight |  -.0060087   .0005179   -11.60   0.000    -.0070411   -.0049763
       _cons |   39.44028   1.614003    24.44   0.000     36.22283    42.65774
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 100:      0.00 /        1 =       0.0040
THIS IS ITERATION 101; TIMER= 1

      Source |       SS           df       MS      Number of obs   =        74
-------------+----------------------------------   F(1, 72)        =    134.62
       Model |   1591.9902         1   1591.9902   Prob > F        =    0.0000
    Residual |  851.469256        72  11.8259619   R-squared       =    0.6515
-------------+----------------------------------   Adj R-squared   =    0.6467
       Total |  2443.45946        73  33.4720474   Root MSE        =    3.4389

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         mpg | Coefficient  Std. err.      t    P>|t|     [95% conf. interval]
-------------+----------------------------------------------------------------
      weight |  -.0060087   .0005179   -11.60   0.000    -.0070411   -.0049763
       _cons |   39.44028   1.614003    24.44   0.000     36.22283    42.65774
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   1:      0.01 /        1 =       0.0050

[Meerim Asanbekova]

Hı Nıck, Hi Andrew, A big thank you for your help! It turns out the timer was causing the issue. Once I removed it, the loop ran perfectly.