Re: st: "Replace all" for a dataset

[Phil Schumm <pschumm@uchicago.edu>]

On Dec 28, 2011, at 3:14 PM, Jessica Kopsic wrote:
> (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.


If you don't care about preserving the distinction between "missing" and "not available", then

    destring variable1-variable200, ignore("missingnotavailable") replace

is quickest.  Alternatively, if you want to preserve the distinction, try:

    ds variable1-variable200, has(type string)
    foreach var of varlist `r(varlist)' {
        replace `var' = ".a" if strpos(`var',"missing")
        replace `var' = ".b" if strpos(`var',"not available")
        destring `var', replace
    }


-- Phil


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