Re: st: executing a command based on the prefix of variables

[Philipp Rehm <Philipp.Rehm@gmx.de>]

I am not sure whether I understand exactly what you want to do, but this 
may help.

1) You could loop over variable lists, along the following lines:

foreach first of varlist telephone* clock* cltv* bicycle* {
 tabstat `first', s(mean n max min med) c(s)
}


2) If the order matters, you could write a more complicated loop, maybe 
like this:

foreach first of varlist telephone clock cltv bicycle {
 foreach second in no sh shno {
  tabstat `first', s(mean n max min med) c(s)
  capture tabstat `first'`second', s(mean n max min med) c(s)
}
}

(The capture is necessary because not all variables are included with 
the same suffixes).

I don't know what you are trying to achieve with this, but there may be 
more straightforward ways to do this. -collapse- and -reshape- may be 
useful for you (again, depending on what you want to do).

HTH,
Philipp


Yusuke Taishi wrote:

> I have a data set that contains variables like;
>
> telephone
> telephoneno
> telephonesh
> telephoneshno
> clock
> clockno
> cltv
> cltvno
> bicycle
> bicycleno
> bicyclesh
> bicycleshno
>
> and many more.  As you can see, they take the form of ;
> "name of item"
> "name of item"no; or
> ["name of item"sh / "name of item"shno, whenever appropriate].
>
> I would like to tell STATA to look at the names of variables and execute;
> tabstat `var', s(mean n max min med) c(s)
> only for the set of variables that contains the same prefix, and loop 
> over the
> next set of variables, and then next, and so on.
>
> I tried to embed ifcmd or subinstr command in the loop but haven't been 
> able
> to pull it off. I feel like I'm missing out something very basic.
> Thanks in advance for your help.
> Yusuke
>
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