How to create vectors in Stata using dataset

[Yihui Jiang]

Hi everyone. I'm a beginner of Stata and I really hope there is someone who can help me with my research assistant questions! Many thanks in advance!

I have a dataset, which includes information of many firms. Every firm has 20 quarters (20 rows) of information (N=1 represents quarter 1, N=20 represents quarter 20). Now I want to include every firm's quarter 1 (N=1) cash flow data into one vector X1, every firm's quarter 2 (N=2) cash flow data into one vector X2,....till X20. How can I do this?

Thanks!

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Yihui:
welcome to this forum.
Have you already taken a look at -help import-?

[Yihui Jiang]

Yihui:
welcome to this forum.
Have you already taken a look at -help import-?

Carol,

Thank you.
No I haven't, so do I need to use import command?

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Yihui:
if you already have a dataset in one of the format listed under -import- why not?

[Yihui Jiang]

Yihui:
if you already have a dataset in one of the format listed under -import- why not?

Carol,

Yes I know how to import the dataset into stata, but I want to know how to transfer the data to vectors?

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Yihui:
if you want go matrices, see -mata-.