Re: st: how do i increment a counter

[Christian Holz <statalist@krueschan.de>]

Annemarie,

you should also check the syntax of the if command (-help ifcmd-). The 
command that you want to be executed if the if statement is true should 
be either follow on the same line as the "if" or should be enclosed by { }.

That still does not, however, solve the problem, that your code looks 
quite confused.
In addition to Neil's interpretations of what you might want to achieve, 
it might also be to get a sum of the age of all observations in your 
dataset that are over 50 (assuming your age variable is "age"). In that 
case you could do

local total_sum=0
local totobs = _N

foreach obs of numlist 1/`totobs' {
   if age[`obs']>50 {
      local total_sum = `total_sum' + age[`obs']
   }
}
di `total_sum'
generate total_sum=`total_sum'


C.

---
Christian Holz
Department of Sociology
University of Glasgow
Scotland, U.K.

aine dooley wrote:

> I am finding in Stata that there does not seem to be an easy way to 
> increment a counter despite countless trys and readings of the manal.
>
> I want to do something llike the following, this is just an example:
>
> generate byte total_sum =0
>
> for each variable of varlist {
> if age > 50
>    total_sum = total_sum + age
> }
>
> Stata doesn't seem to allow the if... then construct unless it is in a 
> program. Although I have written a simple program (crazy that I have to 
> do this) passing arguments, I still can't get it to work.
>
> I must be missing something.
>
> -Annemarie
>
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