Nick--
Yes, with the removal of the word "always" and the replacement of
"fyr" with "minyr" --thanks for the correction... here is the danger
of untested solutions, illustrated nicely, and a big part of the
danger of not using -sysuse data- or equivalent at the start!
The reason I proposed the two-line solution is the phrase "identify
the first year that the idcode appear" which implies to me that Meryle
Weinstein might need the year for other purposes, not just to make a
first-year indicator.
On 5/17/07, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
Ho hum. I don't think Austin meant what he typed.
But I agree with his strong signal that you should
explain your data set-up clearly.
The first year any id appears can be tagged by something like
bysort bdsmaster (year) : gen first = _n == 1
assuming that -bdsmaster- is an id code.
Austin's equivalent is
egen minyr = min(year), by(bdsmaster)
gen first = year == minyr
but you can get there in one line.
Nick
[email protected]
Austin Nichols replied to Meryle Weinstein
> It's always advisable to frame your question in terms of data everyone
> can use, e.g. by starting your example with -sysuse auto- and showing
> the result you want. That said, one way (among many) to generate an
> indicator for first year is:
>
> egen minyr=min(year), by(bdsmaster)
> gen fyr=(year==fyr)
>
> > I've tried following the syntax in FAQ and archives but am
> having difficulty
> > with it. I have a dataset that has an idcode and a year
> for a number of
> > schools. I want to identify the first year that the idcode
> appears. I've
> > tried the following but still don't' get the first occurrence.
> >
> > by bdsmaster (year), sort: gen noccur = sum(bdsmaster)
> > by bdsmaster: gen byte first = noccur == 1 & noccur[_n -
> 1] != noccur
> >
> > gen byte first = sum(bdsmaster == 1) == 1 &
> sum(bdsmaster[_n - 1] == 1) ==
> > 0
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