AW: st: Writing a value from a variable into a macro

["Palan, Stefan (stefan.palan@uni-graz.at)" <stefan.palan@uni-graz.at>]

Ulrich, Neal and Martin,

Thanks for your help! I'm using Neal's solution now, but all of your ideas helped me better understand Stata in this regard!

Cheers,
Stefan.


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] Im Auftrag von Ulrich Kohler
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. September 2010 14:45
An: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Betreff: Re: st: Writing a value from a variable into a macro

Am Freitag, den 24.09.2010, 14:31 +0200 schrieb Palan, Stefan
(stefan.palan@uni-graz.at):
> Hi everybody,
> 
> I would like to write a specific value of a variable in my dataset into a macro. Assume I have a dataset with the two variables "number" and "text". They contain observations like (1, "one"), (2, "two"), (3, "three"), etc. Now I would like to write a specific value into a local macro. For example, I might be looking for the text that goes with the observation with number==2, and would like to assign that value to a local macro. Very amateurishly, I was looking for code similar to the following:
> 
> local v=text if number==2
> 
> Unfortunately, that doesn't work. Can somebody help me with some code that would actually work?


If your dataset _really_ is as you described you can 

. sort number
. local v = text[2]

With _really_ I mean: number contains only 
 (a) positive integer numbers  
 (b) each number exist only once
 (c) no gaps in between two subsequent integer numbers
 (d) no missings

Otherwise the above will fail.

Uli

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