Chapter 2 Executing do-files and making log files
From Mitchell 10.3, you should always use a do file when you work with Stata. I find log files helpful, but do files are essential. Do files provide transparency to show your work, and it help provide replication. One key feature of do files are comments. Comments are an essential part for two reasons. It will help yourself when you go back to your own code to describe what is going one. Second, it helps with replication, since someone should be able to run your code top to bottom and get the same results that you have in your paper, report, or document.
Never use point and click. It is available in Stata, but don’t lower yourself to a SPSS standard.
In case you are new to do files. We’ll start off with a simple example. We’ll pull some data, summarize some data, and tabulate some data.
/Users/Sam/Desktop/Econ 645/Data/Mitchell
(Working Women Survey)
Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
age | 2,246 36.25111 5.437983 21 83
wage | 2,246 288.2885 9595.692 0 380000
hours | 2,242 37.21811 10.50914 1 80
married | Freq. Percent Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
0 | 804 35.80 35.80
1 | 1,442 64.20 100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 2,246 100.00We can look at a similar file called example1.do
We can actually run a do file within a do file
(Working Women Survey w/fixes)
Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
age | 2,246 36.22707 5.337859 21 48
wage | 2,244 7.796781 5.82459 0 40.74659
hours | 2,242 37.21811 10.50914 1 80
married | Freq. Percent Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
0 | 804 35.80 35.80
1 | 1,442 64.20 100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 2,246 100.00You can use the doedit command if you want to open the Do-file Editor, but you can just click to open the Do-File (this is an exception from what I said above).
Since we already have the Do-File Editor open, running the doedit will just open a new blank do file.
Note: you can write do files in Notepad or TextEdit, but you don’t get any of the benefits, such as highlighted text.
Let’s look at a do file that uses the log command
Let’s run it.
Note: It is important to note that when opening a log it must end with a “log close” command. If your do files bombs out (fails to finish) before reaching the log close command, your log will remain open.
Even if we close the log file, we’ll get an error if we try to run the do file again. So we need to add the replace option.
name: <unnamed>
log: /Users/Sam/Desktop/Econ 645/Data/Mitchell/example2.smcl
log type: smcl
opened on: 19 Jan 2026, 17:00:40
(Working Women Survey w/fixes)
Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
age | 2,246 36.22707 5.337859 21 48
wage | 2,244 7.796781 5.82459 0 40.74659
hours | 2,242 37.21811 10.50914 1 80
married | Freq. Percent Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
0 | 804 35.80 35.80
1 | 1,442 64.20 100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 2,246 100.00
name: <unnamed>
log: /Users/Sam/Desktop/Econ 645/Data/Mitchell/example2.smcl
log type: smcl
closed on: 19 Jan 2026, 17:00:40
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