st: "Replace all" for a dataset

["Jessica Kopsic" <jkops@andrew.cmu.edu>]

Hello list members,

I'm trying to do the equivalent of Excel's replace all in a Stata dataset,
changing the words "missing" and "not available" to a missing value for
all variables in the entire dataset. This works fine for one variable:
replace variable1 = "." if variable1 =="missing"
replace variable1 = "." if variable1 =="not available"

But I need to do the whole dataset. I tried using * in the above commands
but it did not work. (returned the message: * invalid name)

I also tried to write two loops, but got a type mismatch error:  foreach
var of varlist variable1-variable200 {
replace `var' = "." if `var' = "missing"
}
(The variables are all string which I can't change until I change
"missing" to missing values. Aside from "missing" and "not available" the
variables are numbers.)

Or perhaps there is a third, easier way.

Thank you!
Jessica



*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/