*! version 0.3.1 24jun2021

gziputil

Work with gzip compressed Stata datasets

Description

gziputil allows you to work with gzip compressed Stata datasets
(.dta.gz) just as if they were plain Stata files. This has some advantages:

1. You need less disk space. The gzip compression algorithm reduces Stata file
size by about 90%.

2. If your data is located on a slow (e.g. network) drive, working with
compressed files reduces access times. The performance gain is especially large
if there is an SSD drive available for storing temporary files and when the
drive holding the data is very slow. Depending on your system,
performance may improve by up to 80%.

gziputil provides the following commands: usegz, savegz,
mergegz and appendgz. Each of these commands is a wrapper around
the corresponding original command (without gz). To facilitate the switch
to using gzip compressed Stata files, each of the commands in this package
mimics the original syntax exactly.

Initial Setup

In case you work on Windows and PeaZip is installed in the standard
directory (C:\Program Files\PeaZip), you can start using the commands provided
by gziputil without Initial Setup. Otherwise:

1. Download and install 7-Zip on your
machine.

2. Add the path of the newly installed 7z.exe to your system's PATH environment
variable.

3. Restart Stata.

To check if 7-Zip is installed and found by gziputil, use the command
check7z which also comes in this package.

Author

Matthias Gomolka, Deutsche Bundesbank, Research Data and Service Centre

matthias.gomolka@bundesbank.de