st: RE: Updating IDs in a foreach loop

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

To loop simultaneously over lists of words and the integers 1 up, you just do 
this 

local i = 1 
foreach file in <list> { 

	<code referring to `i'> 
	<code referring to `file'>

	local ++i
} 

So, each time around the loop you "bump up" `i' (jargon for "adding 1"). 
	
As you say, within your loop you can only do this: 

	gen id_`file' = <whatever>

as long as `file' is consistent with variable name rules. (So punctuation other than underscores wouldn't work, etc.)

Actually, I disagree with you. Unique identifier names just make file manipulation more difficult. What usually would work better is 

	gen id = `"`file'"' 
	gen id = `i' 
	
There is a tutorial in 

SJ-3-2  pr0009  . . . . . . . . . . . . . Speaking Stata:  Problems with lists
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q2/03   SJ 3(2):185--202                                 (no commands)
        discusses ways of working through lists held in macros

which spells out the first part of my reply. (Ignore the stuff on -for- as ancient history, and know that -levels- still exists, but StataCorp prefer that you use -levelsof-.) 

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

Florian Seliger (edited) 

I have specified a -foreach- loop for about 250 company files.
Each file has an ID variable with values between 1-100,000.
At the end of the loop, I want to ask Stata to create an ID that uniquely identifies each dataset.
I have created a unique label for each ID variable, but I also want to give them a number or a company-specific name.

Please take a look at the example below. At the end, "sic_cited_acer_consolidated2.dta" should have an ID variable named "id_1",
"sic_cited_adobe_consolidated2.dta" should have an ID variable "id_2",
and so on. The problem is how to update the number of id_1 after the first file has been accomplished.

An even better alternative would be to have an ID variable "id_acer", "id_adobe", and so on, but renaming with a name that includes the filename `file' yields an "invalid name".

Example:

foreach file in "acer.dta" "adobe.dta" "affiliated.dta" ...   {
use "`file'"
keep id sic_* sic 

....(a lot of other commands)...

rename id id_1
label var id_1 "`file'" 
save "sic_cited_`file'", replace
}


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