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

[Yusuke Taishi <yusuke@ifmr.ac.in>]

Thanks for your help and sorry for the ambiguity in my explanation.

I was able to construct a foreach command that generates the same 
results as your suggestions.
But the results from tabstat are displayed like the following;

    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
   telephone |  1.960888      2659         2         1         2
----------------------------------------------------------------

    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
 telephoneno |      1.25       104         5         1         1
----------------------------------------------------------------

    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
 telephonesh |  1.929293        99         2         1         2
----------------------------------------------------------------

    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
telephones~o |  4.428571         7        20         1         2
----------------------------------------------------------------


But what I wanted to do was actually producing following results by loop;


    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
   telephone |  1.960888      2659         2         1         2
 telephoneno |      1.25       104         5         1         1
 telephonesh |  1.929293        99         2         1         2
telephones~o |  4.428571         7        20         1         2
----------------------------------------------------------------


    variable |      mean         N       max       min       p50
-------------+--------------------------------------------------
       clock |  1.285446      2659         2         1         1
     clockno |  1.996839      1898        15         1         2
----------------------------------------------------------------

i.e. displaying the results from tabstat by the set of variables that 
shares the same prefix.
Of course, the above examples were achieved by writing a single 
command line for each group.
But as I have many such variables, I would somehow want to do this 
with foreach command(s).

Yusuke


At 06:30 PM 9/28/2006, you wrote:

> 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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> *
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*
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