>
>
On Dec 3, 2009, at 9:54 AM, [email protected] wrote:
> Dear statalists,
>
> Is there a command similar to "bys" if I want to gsort the variables?
>
> For example,
>
> bys year (area): g num=_n
>
> However, I want to gsort the variable of area.
>
> I have tried as followings,
>
> gsort year -area
>
> by year: g num=_n
>
> Is there an easier way to do it just like -bys-?
>
You can use the -gen()- option of -gsort- to create the running N by each group:
gsort year - area, gen(num)
>
> By the way, when I typed "d,short" after I typed "gsort year -area", the result was as followings,
>
> Contains data from study.dta
> obs: 155
> vars: 6 5 Jun 2009 01:45
> size: 3,875 (99.9% of memory free)
> Sorted by: year
>
> Why the sorted variable did not contain area?
>
-desc- displays only "year", not "area", after -gsort- because gsort creates a tempvar for the descending sorting variables like "area", so they go away after -gsort- runs its course.
By the way, if both variables were ascending-- that is if you were to type "gsort year area" --then -describe- would show both "year" and "area",not just "year".
If you want to to see the tempvar that -gsort- creates when you have ascending and descending sorts in -gsort-, you can edit the ado-file by adding the a line with the command "desc" just after the line: " sort `part1' `tvars' " in the ado-file. It will show under -desc- that the dataset is sorted by "year" and the tempvar "_00000". Of course, always take care when looking at or editing a system ado-file--you may want to make a copy of gsort.ado and name it something else before playing around with it too much.
> Thank you for any help!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Rose
~ Eric
__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute
Texas A&M University
[email protected]
Office: +979.845.6754
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