I am using Robert Picard's excellent project package. I would like to keep track of the number of observations dropped while cleaning and merging my data, along with the reasons.
I know how to do the counts, but my question is how to keep track and generate a final tally.
It can be written to the logs, but then I have to manually go and extract them from the logs.
If I append them to a separate file (e.g. a text file), I will have an issue when one file that drops observations is edited and another file is not, since the non-edited file may not be re-run (if nothing it depends on is changed, which is managed by project), and the counts will get lost.
I was thinking along the line of a .dta file with a variable for each of the different drop reasons, so that the counts can each be changed individually, but this seems like a very "hacky" solution. Also, the project package doesn't seem to have a way to handle a file that will be changed by more than one do-file.

I would love to hear any suggestions.
Thank you!