A SAS User's Guide to Stata

This guide is intended to introduce a SAS user to Stata and to be a cheat sheet when writing Stata code.  There is a Stata tutorial to help any new user learn Stata.  It is referred to on occasion throughout these pages.

• Basic Conceptual Differences Between SAS and Stata.
• Stata's Windows Mode
• SAS code matched to Stata code
• How to submit Stata do-files in batch mode.
• Example Stata do-file in the Stata tutorial

Tools to transfer data between SAS and Stata:

• SAVASTATA: SAS macro to save a SAS dataset as a Stata dataset.
• SAVASAS: Stata program to save a Stata dataset as a SAS dataset.
• USESAS: Stata program to use a SAS dataset while in Stata.
  
• SAVAS (c-shell) script: Invoked at a UNIX/Linux prompt makes Stata data file copies of SAS data files or SAS data file copies of Stata data files.
  

Papers to presented at the Southeastern SAS Users Group conference (SESUG) in Nashville November 2004:

• Stata for the Struggling SAS Mind: Introduction to Stata from someone who is already familiar with SAS.
• Tools to Transfer Data between SAS and Stata: Explanation of how to use the SAVASTATA, SAVASAS, USESAS, and SAVAS programs.

SAS macros inspired by Stata commands:

• MINIME : SAS macro to reset variable lengths to a safe minimum storage length like Stata's -compress-.
  
• REN_STEM : SAS macro to rename variables by adding a prefix or suffix which Stata can do in a -foreach- loop. 
  
• CHAR2FMT : SAS macro to convert character variables to numeric but keep the character information stored in a SAS format like Stata's -encode-.

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Questions or comments?  If you are affiliated to the Carolina Population Center, send them to Phil Bardsley; non-affiliates may contact the author Dan Blanchette.