Re: st: labels as values of a string variable

["R.E. De Hoyos" <redeho@hotmail.com>]

Thanks to Nick and James.

Both of their solutions worked fine. I needed to include an equal sign (=) 
to evaluate the expression contained in the local macro.

Rafa


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nick Winter" <nw53@cornell.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: st: labels as values of a string variable



> I haven't been following this thread, so I don't know why you are trying to 
> do this; I suspect htere is a better way.
>
> That said, what's going on here is this.  The line:
>
>     local label`i' = "string[_n]"
>
> is assigning the literal string 'string[_n]' to the local macro label1
>
> But, when you say
>
>     di `label1'
>
> Stata interpets that as
>
>     di string[_n]
>
> and then it displays the contents of string[_n] -- that is, it displays 
> the first observation of the variable string.
>
> You will see this if you instead type
>
>     di "`label1'"
>
> which will display the text
>
>     string[_n]
>
> What you need in your original line is this:
>
>     local label`i' = "`=string[_n]'"
>
> In other words, you wrap it in the double quotation marks, to deal with 
> the spaces.  But inside the quotes, you surround it with `= and ' , which 
> tell stata to evaluate the expression.  This gives you the contents of 
> string[_n], rather than the literal string "string[_n]"
>
> All of that said, unless I missed something, the _n in this expression is 
> the equivalent of a 1 -- that is, you are just grabbing the first 
> observation of each.
>
> Would -encode- do what you want?  Or at least your first approach would 
> work as:
>
>    levels string, local(labels)
>    tokenize `"`labels'"'
>
> What is your ultimate goal?
>
> --Nick Winter
>
>
>
> At 09:41 AM 6/2/2005, you wrote:
>
> > James,
> >
> > Thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately it didn't work. The value that I 
> > am trying to assign is a string containing space, e.g. "Gross foreign 
> > direct investment (% of GDP)". Therefore I have to include the quotation 
> > marks (""). In fact the coding I send in my previous email was assigning 
> > the string values to the local macros, the problem was when I tried to 
> > label the variables using those local macros.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Rafa
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Cui" 
> > <james.cui@med.monash.edu.au>
> > To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
> > Sent: Thursday, June 02, 2005 3:25 PM
> > Subject: Re: st: labels as values of a string variable
> >
> >
> >
> > > If you change
> > > local label`i' = "string[_n]"
> > > to
> > > local label`i' = string[_n]
> > > it should work.
> > > The latter assigns the value of string[_n] to label`i'.
> > >
> > > James.
> > >
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "R.E. De Hoyos" <redeho@hotmail.com>
> > > Date: Thursday, June 2, 2005 6:54 pm
> > > Subject: st: labels as values of a string variable
> > >
> > > > I want to attach labels to a group of variables (varlist).
> > > >
> > > > The labels that I want to use for each variable are available as
> > > > observations in one of the variables (string). I tried the following:
> > > >
> > > > levels string, local(labels)
> > > > tokenize `lables'
> > > >
> > > > * An error occurred because the string values contained spaces.
> > > > Therefore I
> > > > tried:
> > > >
> > > > egen id = group(string)    //20 groups
> > > > local i=1
> > > > while `i'<21 {
> > > >    preserve
> > > >    keep if id==`i'
> > > >    local label`i' = "string[_n]"
> > > >    local i = `i'+1
> > > >    restore
> > > > }
> > > >
> > > > When I used -di `label1'- the label names where correctly
> > > > displayed. However
> > > > when I tried to attached them to the variables using -label var- :
> > > >
> > > > label var var1 "`label1'"
> > > >
> > > > The label attached was "string[_n]" and not the value of it.
> > > >
> > > > Many thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Rafa
> > > >
> > > > ________________________
> > > > R.E. De Hoyos
> > > > Faculty of Economics
> > > > University of Cambridge
> > > > CB3 9DE, UK
> > > > www.econ.cam.ac.uk/phd/red29
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> --------------------------------------------------------
> Nicholas Winter                           607.255.8819 t
> Assistant Professor                       607.255.4530 f
> Department of Government              nw53@cornell.edu e
> 308 White Hall            falcon.arts.cornell.edu/nw53 w
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY 14853-4601
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