st: small problem with 'stack' command !

[Marwan Elkhoury <elkhoury.marwan@gmail.com>]

dear statalist,

I have a minor problem with the 'stack' command in stata (stata 10 for  
windows xp).

I have 5 groups of countries of various size length which I want to  
stack into a single group of two variables, say, ctryg totrnk.

right now I have cntry_i, rnk_i, for i=1 to 5
and if I write the following:

stack cntry_1 rnk_1 cntry_2 rnk_2 cntry_3 rnk_3 cntry_4 rnk_4 cntry_5  
rnk_5, into(cntry_1 rnk_1) wide clear
ren cntry_1 cntryg
ren rnk_1 totrnk

It, in fact, creates two variables of size length the smallest of the  
size length of the groups and not stacking the entire number of  
observations.

what would be the easiest and smartest way of stacking this  
'unbalanced' group of variables, if any, to create one group of two  
variables from the 5 different groups ?

best regards,

Marwan Elkhoury

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