st: RE: truncate variable names

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

renvars, trim(8) 

where -renvars- is downloadable from the SJ files. -search renvars- for
precise location. 

Note that the first principles solution 

foreach v of var * { 
	local new = substr("`v'", 1, 8) 
	rename `v' `new' 
}

is more instructive about principles but will fail part-way through if
two or more variable names have the same first 8 characters. -renvars-
warns you of that problem in advance, so that you can rethink strategy. 

By the way, this strikes me as mostly a bad idea unless you are
exporting to some other software that requires it. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

SCHOUMAKER Bruno

I would like to truncate the variable names of my dataset to 8
characters.

Does anybody know how I can do that in Stata ?


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