How to load subset of dta/Stata file with R

Question

Coming from Stata this seems to be an easy thing, though I cannot find a solution with R, though I read How to read a subset of large dataset in R?

Is it possible as it is in Stata to name the variables from a dataset I need and load just them? Is it then possible to name again specific variables from another data set and merge them?

check out `data.table::fread`, which has arguments `select` and `drop` — bouncyball, Jun 29 '16 at 15:50
I don't think `read.dta` from the foreign package (Stata 12-) or `read.dta13` from readstata13 (Stata 13-14) have this option. Your best bet would be reading the .dta file once, saving it as an R binary, with `save` or subsetting and then saving. — lmo, Jun 29 '16 at 15:51
@bouncyball I haven't tried it, but I don't think `fread` will read in .dta files. — lmo, Jun 29 '16 at 16:00
@Imo I don't think so either, but in case OP converted their .dta to a more friendly format — bouncyball, Jun 29 '16 at 16:09
Hm so I guess there is no other way than to change the format. However thank you! — Stephan, Jun 30 '16 at 09:38

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 21 '18 at 09:50

I haven't tested it myself, but the latest version of the readstata13 package seems to allow for subsetting on both columns and rows:

read.dta13(file, convert.factors = TRUE, 
           generate.factors = FALSE, encoding = "UTF-8", 
           fromEncoding = NULL, convert.underscore = FALSE, 
           missing.type = FALSE, convert.dates = TRUE, 
           replace.strl = TRUE, add.rownames = FALSE, 
           nonint.factors = FALSE, select.rows = NULL, 
           select.cols = NULL, strlexport = FALSE, 
           strlpath = ".")

How to load subset of dta/Stata file with R

1 Answers1