st: Re: Extract variable name in order to change it, iteratively

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

Jeppe,

You can try

local year 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02

foreach y in local years {
   forval i = 1/100 {
       if `y'>=88 {
           ren var`i'_`y' var`i'_19`y'
       }
       else {
           ren var`i'_`y' var`i'_20`y'
       }
   }
}

I haven't tried it, so I hope it works. 
Rafa
________________________
R.E. De Hoyos
Faculty of Economics
University of Cambridge
CB3 9DE, UK
www.econ.cam.ac.uk/phd/red29/ 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeppe Warberg Larsen" <jeppewl@gmail.com>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 02, 2005 1:14 PM
Subject: st: Extract variable name in order to change it, iteratively



> I have a wide data structure. Each observation consists of a unique
> identifier (say, id) and some series of annual variables with a
> two-digit suffix (running in different intervals). Like this:
>
> id var1_88 var1_89 ... var1_02 var2_92 var2_93 ... var2_02
> var3_...................................
>
> Now I want to reshape it to long, but stata fails to read the
> two-digit values after the turn of century (00 01 02), so I need to
> rename all varibles to a four-digit year.
>
> foreach var of varlist var1_88-var100_02{
> //save name of variable in a local string
> //do nessecary string manipulation (I can do that)
> //rename var 
> }
>
> My problem seems to be:
> 1) extracting the name of the current variable
> 2) rename
>
> Do you understand what I'm asking?
> I'd be glad if someone can help, and please don't tell me that it
> would be easier to do this manually, because I will need to do this
> operation many times...
>
> Jeppe W. Larsen
>
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