Eva is correct, as usual. Some further notes for Ashim and anyone
interested:
The syntaxes -foreach ... in ...- and -foreach ... of ...- are very
different.
With the first -foreach- takes what you typed and treats it very
literally. There is no translation, expansion, or substitution.
With the second -foreach- is inclined to expand whatever is specified
afterwards, e.g. a varlist specified as such will be expanded to the
constituent variable names.
With this code
. foreach x in _all {
replace `x'=`x'[_n-1] if _n==_N
}
You have specified a list with a single item, namely _all, and -foreach-
pays no attention to what the item means. It is entirely as if you have
specified
replace _all = _all[_n-1] if _n == _N
which happens to be illegal. So, the -foreach- specification is legal,
but what it implies within the loop is not. To drive that home, consider
this
foreach x in _all {
d `x'
}
The example is dopey, but it illustrates that you could have a perfectly
legal example.
(Why is it dopey?
Because there is little point in setting up a loop with a single item.
Because -d _all- is just more easily written -d-.)
Nick
[email protected]
P.S. On a different note, what you are doing seems a bit odd, but there
is another way to do it:
drop in L
expand 2 in L
Eva Poen
you want to change the first line:
foreach x of varlist _all {
Ashim Kapoor
> I wish to replace the last obs of EACH variable by the previous value.
> But when I do this : -
> . foreach x in _all {
> replace `x'=`x'[_n-1] if _n==_N
> }
>
> it does'nt work.!
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
