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help for ^outseries^                    (Internal BC distribution, 31 May 2001)
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Write timeseries to external files
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    ^outseries^ [varlist] [using], [^Dir^(string) ^Tin^(string) Matlab ]



Description
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^outseries^ writes quarterly or monthly timeseries currently in memory
to external files, one file per series. A ^varlist^ (using wildcards or
hyphenated syntax) may be used to write a subset of variables. Alternatively,
a ^using^ clause may specify the name of a file in which series names are
provided, one per line. Unless ^dir^ is specified, a new directory will be 
created, timestamped (e.g. ^29-May-2001^) and each retrieved series will be 
written to that directory via ^outfile^ as an ASCII text file 
(comma-delimited format), with the filename containing the series mnemonic.

^outseries^ is for use with time-series data. You must ^tsset^ your data
before using ^outseries^.

^outseries^ makes use of the ^file^ command, added to Stata version 7
on 8 May 2001. If you do not have this command, update your copy of Stata.


Options
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^dir^ specifies that the files for each data series should be placed in 
the existing subdirectory named in the option. The subdirectory must exist
in the current working directory, and you must have write access to it. If
files of the same names exist, they will be replaced.

^tin^ allows the first month and last month of data retrieval to be specified. 
Using the same format as the ^tin(first,last)^ function, you would specify 
^tin(1964m1,1979m10)^ to limit the retrieved data to that time range. If 
missing values exist within the specified range, they will be coded as such 
(.) in the output file.

^matlab^ indicates that the series are to be written to files with
extension ^.dat^ and missing value codes of ^NaN^ used in place of ^.^
within the data series. If this option is specified, the ordinary text
series are not created in ^.txt^ files. The resulting ^.dat^ files
may be read into MATLAB via ^load SERIES.dat^ or ^A = load('SERIES.dat')^.


Examples
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	. ^outseries D*^
	
	. ^outseries using series.list, matlab^

	. ^outseries D* , dir(dvars) tin(1959m1,1970m12) matlab^

	. ^outseries, tin(1959m1,)^

 
Author
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Christopher F Baum, Boston College, USA
baum@@bc.edu


Also see
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On-line:  help for @outfile@ 

