List files*in a directory that do not end with a suffix

[Stephen Okiya]

Hi Stata users,

I have dta files at both household and individual levels in the same folder with the difference in names being individual level dataset having the suffix p e.g ba03 and ba03p. I am wondering whether it's possible to tweek the command below to list files that do not end with p

local files : dir "`MICSdir'" files "*.dta"

Thanks in advance!

[William Lisowski]

You can't directly tweak the command below, but you can get what you want in several other ways. The example below demonstrates my preferred technique, but it does rely on your household file names never ending in p.

. dir demo

total 128
-rw-r--r--  1 lisowskiw  staff  12765 Jan  2 09:14 ba03.dta
-rw-r--r--  1 lisowskiw  staff  12765 Jan  2 09:14 ba03p.dta
-rw-r--r--  1 lisowskiw  staff  12765 Jan  2 09:15 bzxx.dta
-rw-r--r--  1 lisowskiw  staff  12765 Jan  2 09:15 bzxxp.dta

. local files : dir "demo" files "*.dta"

. local ind   : dir "demo" files "*p.dta"

. local hh    : list files - ind

. macro list _files _ind _hh
_files:         "bzxxp.dta" "bzxx.dta" "ba03p.dta" "ba03.dta"
_ind:           "bzxxp.dta" "ba03p.dta"
_hh:            "bzxx.dta" "ba03.dta"

.

[Stephen Okiya]

Thanks a bunch William Lisowski for the great solution. Much appreciated.