help cfout
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Title

    cfout -- Compare two files, outsheeting a list of differences

Syntax

        cfout [varlist] using filename , id(varname) [options]

    options               Description
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
      nopunct             ignores differences in punctuation and
                            capitalization
      altid(varname)      display an additional identifying variable.
      name(filename)      name of the resulting .csv file
      format( %fmt)       display format to use for numeric variables
      nomatch             surpress warnings about missing observations
      upper               convert all string variables to upper case before
                            comparing
      lower               convert all string variables to lower case before
                            comparing
      nostring            do not compare any string variables
      replace             overwrite existing filename
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

Description

    cfout compares the variables in varlist from the dataset in memory to the
    variables in varlist from the using dataset and saves a list of
    differences to a .csv file.  It is useful if you are doing data entry and
    want to get an easy-to-work-with list of discrepancies between the first
    and second entries of a dataset.

Options

    id(varname) is required.  varname is the variable that matches
        observations in the master dataset to observations in the using
        dataset.  It must uniquely identify observations in both the master
        and using datasets.

    nopunct Deletes the following characters before comparing:  ! ? ' and
        replaces the following characters with a space:  . , - / ;

    altid(varname) displays varname in the resulting .csv file.  Displaying a
        second id is useful when you suspect there may be errors in the
        primary id. altid is not used for matching; it is purely cosmetic.

    name(filename) specifies the name and path of the resulting .csv file.
        The default is "discrepancies report.csv"

    format( %fmt) specifies the display format to be used for all numeric
        variables, including id if it is numeric.  The default is %9.0g.  See
        format for help with formating.

    nomatch is specified if the number of observations in the master and
        using dataset do not need to match.  The default is to assume 1:1
        matching between the datasets, and to list any observations that
        existin in only one dataset.

        
Remarks

    cfout is intended to be used as part of the data entry process when data
    is entered two times for accuracy.  After the second entry, the datasets
    need to be reconciled.  cfout will compare the first and second entries
    and generate a list of discrepancies in a format that is useful for the
    data entry teams.  cfout assumes that the variable specified in the id
    option uniquely idenfifies observations in both datasets.  cfout does not
    compare variables that have a different string/numeric type in both
    datasets.  cfout also doesn't compare variables that are different in all
    observations.

Examples



use "first entry.dta"

cfout region-no_good_at_all using "second entry.dta" , id(uniqueid)

Saved Results

    cfout saves the following in r():

    Scalars   
      r(discrep)     number of discrepenacies
      r(N)           number of data points compared


Author

    Ryan Knight, rknight at poverty-action.org

Also see

    Online:  cf, compare