Loop for creating several empty csv files

Question

I need to create 215 empty csv files with Stata and save them on my computer.

Since this is a repetitive task, a loop would be perfect. Each file would have a similar but different name (for example Data_Australia, Data_Austria and so on).

How do I create a loop to generate several empty csv datasets with Stata?

I tried the community-contributed command touch but it works well when you only need to generate one empty dataset.

Answer 1

Assuming you want a completely empty file (no header row or anything), just open a file to write to, and immediately close it again.

cd "C:\Users\My\Directory"
local country_names Australia Austria "Republic of Korea" // add all the names here 
foreach country_name in `country_names' {
    file open f1 using "Data_`country_name'.csv", write replace
    file close f1
}

If you have the names stored as a string variable, say country, you can instead loop through the values in that variable (in this case stopping when it reaches the end or an empty row).

local row = 1
while country[`row'] != "" {
    file open f1 using "Data_`=country[`row']'.csv", write replace
    file close f1
    local ++row
}