Answers to date support my prejudice that -count-
is one of the most neglected Stata commands.
The problem specified is to -drop- variables if
and only if all values are zero or missing. Hence
no values have other values. This then leads
directly to the solution
foreach v of var cross* {
qui count if !(`v' == 0 | missing(`v'))
if r(N) == 0 drop `v'
}
or, if you prefer,
foreach v of var cross* {
qui count if (`v' == 0 | missing(`v'))
if r(N) == _N drop `v'
}
If you knew for certain that you had no extended
missings .a ... .z, this could be
foreach v of var cross* {
qui count if !inlist(`v', 0, .)
if r(N) == 0 drop `v'
}
or, if you prefer,
foreach v of var cross* {
qui count if inlist(`v', 0, .)
if r(N) == _N drop `v'
}
Note that the -summarize- in other solutions
could be made -, meanonly- with no loss and
some small gain in efficiency. The criterion
used by Kit that r(max) == 0 & r(sd) == 0 implies
that all non-missings are 0 could be replaced
by checking r(min) == r(max) == 0.
Nick
[email protected]
Kit Baum
> Unfortunately that doesn't work either.
> If you create a variable that is wholly missing, you will see that r
> (max) is not defined, so your if condition
> looks like
>
> if == 0
>
> which is surely invalid syntax. You could figure this out if you did
>
> set trace on
>
> and then ran your code.
>
> Given that a variable that is wholly missing and a variable that is
> always zero have quite different characteristics (for instance, a
> variable that is zero or missing has r(sum) = 0, but that is not
> sufficient to conclude that the variable meets your specs) it might be
> easiest to do something like
>
> foreach v of varlist jun* {
> qui su `v'
> if r(N)==0 {
> drop `v'
> }
> if r(sd) == 0 & r(max) == 0 {
> capture drop `v'
> }
> }
>
Phil said
> -help drop- shows that the syntax:
>
> -drop varlist-
>
> does not permit an -if- qualifier.
>
> Perhaps:
>
> foreach var of varlist cross* {
> qui su `var'
> if `r(max)'==0 {
> drop `var'
> }
> }
Socrates Mokkas
> > I have a problem with dropping variables. This is my small loop:
> >
> > foreach var of varlist cross* {
> > qui su `var'
> > drop `var' if `r(max)'==0
> > }
> >
> > Why is the invalid syntax comming up? What I want to do is
> to drop
> variables
> > ( included in the varlist cross*) if they have values only of
> zeros or
> > missing values. Am I missing the obvious here?
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