New usort command - byable sorting with [if] [in] and locale support

[Ilya Bolotov]

Thanks to Kit Baum, SSC now offers an alternative command to sort and gsort.

TITLE
'USORT': module to perform locale-based ascending and descending sort that
supports conditional statements, observation ranges, and user-defined
handling of substrings and missing values

DESCRIPTION/AUTHOR(S)

This program is a byable sort command, which allows a) custom
first and last substrings, including system (.) and all remaining
missing values, b) gsort-like syntax for the ascending and
descending order, as well as c) conditional [if] and range [in]
sorting. The program is built around the Stata sort command and
adds the data-sorted flag (sorted by) to the dataset if all rows
are selected and applies Mata _collate() otherwise. Sorting large
datasets might be taxing on machine memory or disk space.

KW: sort
KW: conditional
KW: descending order

EXAMPLES

    Setup:
        . sysuse auto

    Sort observations in ascending order by price:
        . usort price

    Sort observations in ascending order by make in Czech, grouped by foreign, with VW models placed at
    the top:
        . bysort foreign: usort make, first(VW, pos) loc(cs_CS)

    Sort observations in descending order by mpg and price:
        . usort -mpg -price

    Sort observations in descending order by price for domestic cars only:
        . usort -mpg -price if ! foreign

[Ilya Bolotov]

If you find a bug in usort, please post it here

[Ilya Bolotov]

Two major bugs were fixed in version 1.1.1: there was a problem with natural sorting, and by/bysort produced a descending order. Furthermore, usort now supports wildcards. You can type

. usort -a*

which will sort all variables beginning with "a" in descending order.

[Bruce Weaver]

Hello Ilya Bolotov. Version 1.1.1 does not seem to be available yet. I have tried updating two different ways, and still have version 1.1.0. See below.

. which usort
c:\ado\plus\u\usort.ado
*! version 1.1.0  07oct2024  I I Bolotov

. adoupdate usort, update
note: ado update updates community-contributed files; type update to check for updates to official Stata.

Checking status of specified packages:

  [284] usort at http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/u:
        installed package is up to date

(no packages require updating)

. which usort
c:\ado\plus\u\usort.ado
*! version 1.1.0  07oct2024  I I Bolotov

. ssc install usort, replace
checking usort consistency and verifying not already installed...
all files already exist and are up to date.

. which usort
c:\ado\plus\u\usort.ado
*! version 1.1.0  07oct2024  I I Bolotov

Cheers,
Bruce

[Frode Andre]

If you find a bug in usort, please post it here

Perhaps not a bug, but usort does not seem to recognise Nordic characters, e.g. “ö”, “æ” or “å”.
Building on the help-file:

sysuse auto
rename price æprice
usort æprice

gives:

invalid syntax
r(100);