st: Returning Labels based on values.

["Cook, Daniel E" <daniel-e-cook@uiowa.edu>]

For programming purposes, I'm wondering if there is a way to return the a label based on the value used to specify it.

For example, consider a data set with the following values and labels for the variable SEASON:

1 Winter
2 Spring
3 Summer
4 Fall

Now suppose I have a do file and I want to create a graph for the mean temperature of each season...so I write something like this:

foreach v of numlist 1/4 {

...create a graph if SEASON == `v'... of avg. temp.

}

Now - I want to label each graph using the value label of the season being specified. In other words, if the graph is for the Summer - I'd like to add the value label "Summer" as the title, caption, or perhaps within the filename. So I'm looking for something like this:

foreach v of numlist 1/4 {

local name getvaluelabel(`v', SEASON) //This function would return the label for a given value by specifying the variable or value label.

...create a graph if SEASON == `v'...title(`name')

}

I have looked everywhere for a way to do this but can't seem to find anything. Perhaps I am overlooking something.

Thanks,
-E


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