st: RE: loop question

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

First off, a -foreach- loop over the integers 1/20 is better written as a -forval- loop 

forval n = 1/20 { 

} 

But more importantly, 

1. Looping sounds a bad way to do what you want.  

2. You are treating macros as if they were variables, which is a major misunderstanding.

You'd be better off explaining the structure of your data and what you want to do in words, and then you'll probably get better advice on what you should do. 

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

P.S. please see Statalist advice: 

http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/statalist.html#tojoin

especially 2.1.3. 

P C
===

I have a loop question. 

I want to do something like this:

local i=0
gen w1ttflsbyger=.
foreach n in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20{
 replace w1ttflsbyger=`i'+1 if w1flsibage`n'<w1ageint & w1flsibage`n'!=. & 
w1ageint~=.
 replace i=`i'+1 if w1flsibage`n'<w1ageint & w1flsibage`n'!=. & w1ageint~=.
}

Of course, the last line of the syntax was wrong. Basically, I want to write 
something to let "i" to increase by 1 if the condition: "w1flsibage`n'<w1ageint 
& w1flsibage`n'!=. & w1ageint~=." are satisfied. Otherwise, "i" won't increase 
by 1 and will jump out of the loop.

How should I write the loop?


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