title: Matrix Market files and Stata
body: <p>I want to read a <a href="http://math.nist.gov/MatrixMarket/formats.html" rel="nofollow">Matrix Market exchange file</a> into Stata. For example, I've got a sparse matrix <code>auth.mfx</code> created by the Python command <code>sio.mmwrite()</code> which I would like to have as a spatial weights matrix. The respective command <code>spatwmat</code> requires a <code>.dta</code> file:</p>
  
  <pre><code>insheet using "auth_matrix.mtx", clear
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>just reads the file as a text file, but not as a matrix. Is there a way to read matrix market files into Stata? Obviously, they are a recognized format in R, Python, Matlab, Fortran, etc.</p>