Restoring base ado-files

[Dylan James-Taylor]

A few weeks ago, I was reading through the roctab.ado source code ("/Applications/Stata/ado/base/r/roctab.ado") to get some inspiration for a similar command that I wanted to create. In doing so, I made some slight alterations to the code to modify and display summaries of various temporary variables as the program executed.

This all worked fine, but what I hadn't realised was that I had Stata's "Always save before do/run" command on, and I appear to have now permanently modified the ado-file. This was some time ago now, and I am having trouble restoring roctab to its original functionality – is there any way to restore base files in Stata beyond simply reinstalling the entire application? Any advice on this would be gratefully received.

NB: I appreciate that modifying the base file itself is just about the stupidest thing I could have done, so I apologise in advance.

[Andrew Musau]

Ask someone with Stata to send you the roctab.ado file, and replace your file with it.

[Chen Samulsion]

Rename your modified command as roctab_old.ado, or roctab9.ado, or anything else, and then reinstall roctab from ssc or other souces. In this way, the original roctab will be installed, and your modifying version will be retained.

[Dylan James-Taylor]

Thank you both for your (very quick!) responses. As far as I can tell, roctab is not available for downlaod from SSC as it is a base file, and I haven't been able to locate the original code anywhere else. As Andrew suggested, I think I will have to contact a friend/colleague with Stata and have them send it to me

[Nick Cox]

Reinstalling the entire application is not an outrageous suggestion. Don't be embarrassed by this. I could give a long list of things I have done that are not best practice or even what I advise against as bad practice.