Title stata.com

shell — Temporarily invoke operating system

Description Syntax Remarks and examples Reference

Also see

Description

shell (synonym: “!”) allows you to send commands to your operating system or to enter your oper-

ating system for interactive use. Stata will wait for the shell to close or the operating system command

to complete before continuing.

winexec allows you to start other programs (such as browsers) from Stata’s command line. Stata

winexec program name





xshell | !!

1

2 shell — Temporarily invoke operating system

shell, without arguments, preserves your session and invokes the operating system. Stata’s

Command window will disappear, and a Windows command prompt will appear, indicating that you

may not continue in Stata until you exit the Windows command prompt. To reenter Stata, type exit

at your operating system’s prompt. Your Stata session is reestablished just as if you had never left.

Say that you are using Stata for Windows and you suddenly realize you need to do two things.

You need to enter your operating system for a few minutes. Rather than exiting Stata, doing what

to enter your operating system, issue a command, and then exit back to Stata. If you want to execute

one command, you can type the command right after the word shell or the exclamation point:

If you do this, the Windows command prompt will open and close as the command is executed.

Stata for Windows users can also use the winexec command, which allows you to launch any

Windows application from within Stata. You can think of it as a shortcut for clicking on the Windows

Assume that you are working in Stata and decide that you want to run a text editor:

launches to complete before performing any further commands.

shell, with arguments, invokes your operating system, executes one command, and redirects the

output to the Results window. The command must complete before you can enter another command

in the Command window.

Say that you are using Stata for Mac and suddenly realize that there are two things you have to

do. You need to switch to the Finder or enter commands from a terminal for a few minutes. Rather

than exiting Stata, doing what you have to do, and then switching back to Stata, you type shell and

the command in the Command window to execute one command. You then repeat this step for each

command that you want to execute from the shell.

shell — Temporarily invoke operating system 3

Experienced Stata users seldom type out the word shell. They type “!”.

a shell) and executes the command there. Typing !!vi myfile.do is equivalent to typing xshell

vi myfile.do.

On macOS, xterm is available when X11 is installed. To install X11, you must first download

XQuartz from https://www.xquartz.org/.

Stata for Mac users can also use the winexec command, which allows you to launch any native

application from within Stata. You may, however, have to specify the absolute path to the application.

If the application you wish to launch is a macOS application bundle, you must specify an absolute

path to the executable in the bundle.

Assume that you are working in Stata and decide that you want to run a text editor:

path. Also using

~

in the path will not resolve to a home directory. If an application cannot be

launched from a terminal window, it cannot be launched by winexec.

The important difference between winexec and shell is that Stata does not wait for whatever

program winexec launches to complete before continuing. Stata will wait for the program shell

launches to complete before performing any further commands. shell is appropriate for executing

shell commands; winexec is appropriate for launching applications.

shell, without arguments, preserves your session and invokes the operating system. The Command

window will disappear, and an xterm window will appear, indicating that you may not do anything

4 shell — Temporarily invoke operating system

You can now do whatever you need to do, and Stata will wait until you exit the window before

continuing.

Experienced Stata users seldom type out the word shell. They type “!”. Also you do not have

to enter your operating system, issue a command, and then exit back to Stata. If you want to execute

one command, you can type the command right after the word shell or the exclamation point:

Be careful because sometimes you will want to type

and in other cases,

When you are through, type exit to the Unix prompt, and you will return to Stata:

If, on the other hand, you want to specify in Stata the Unix command that you want to execute,

you need to decide whether you want to use shell, xshell, or winexec. The answer depends on

whether the command you want to execute requires a terminal window or is an X application:

. . . does not need a terminal window: use shell . . . (synonym: !. . . )

. . . needs a terminal window: use xshell . . . (synonym: !!. . . )

. . . is an X application: use winexec . . . (no synonym)

vi myfile.do.

When you type winexec xedit myfile.do, Stata directly invokes the command specified (xedit

here). No xterm window is brought up nor is a shell invoked because, here, xterm does not need

it. xterm is an X application that will create its own window in which to run. You could have

typed !!xedit myfile.do. That would have brought up an unnecessary xterm window from which

xedit would have been executed, and that would not matter. You could even have typed !xedit

myfile.do. That would have invoked an unnecessary shell from which xedit would have been

executed, and that would not matter, either. The important difference, however, is that shell and

xshell wait until the process completes before allowing Stata to continue, and winexec does not.

shell — Temporarily invoke operating system 5

6 shell — Temporarily invoke operating system

Reference