Re: st: Re: Delete upper case variable

[Eric Booth <eric.a.booth@gmail.com>]

Hi Nick:

Ahh, yes, that was the message I was thinking of - I couldn't find it in a SL search.  I'm glad I wasnt completely imagining things.


Just a friendly suggestion:  
I know that, in that thread you referenced, you said that you wouldn't make any changes in -findname- for selecting variables names by case since it can be done by any()/all(), but since these options' description "has all VALUES satisfying condition" (my emph.), I think it's big leap for a user to realize it could work with a variable name (and with multiple messages in the past few weeks about this topic there seems to be a need for this functionality).  
I'm really just suggesting adding an example or clarification of some kind to the options'  descriptions to clarify that these options can be extended for use with variable names in this type of situation.  Obviously you're free to ignore my suggestion - just wanted to give my 2 cents [which, with the USD to Pounds exchange rate what it is these days, is worth even less than that to you!].

By the way, Kit emailed me privately to gloat that his solution to this problem was 26 times more efficient than mine.  

- Eric







__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute 
Texas A&M University
ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
+979.845.6754

On Apr 22, 2012, at 7:38 PM, Nick Cox wrote:

> You are right about your innermost thought on -findname- (SJ, SSC). See
> 
> http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-04/msg00193.html
> 
> The -any()- and -all()- options were intended to let users stipulate
> conditions about the values of variables, but you can use it as a way
> of stipulating conditions about their names.
> 
> The condition that upper("<char>") == "<char>" is also satisfied by
> the underscore _ which can begin variable names.
> 
> Nick
> 
> On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Eric Booth <eric.a.booth@gmail.com> wrote:
>> <>
>> 
>> I don't think -findname- has the ability to select on variable case (that I could find anyways ((I thought I remembered Nick Cox commenting about this in an earlier thread, but I couldnt find it - or I'm imagining it))) ).
>> 
>> Here's a one way to do it:
>> 
>> *************!
>> sysuse auto, clear
>> rename mpg headroom, upper
>> **
>> foreach a in  `c(ALPHA)' {
>> cap ds `a'*
>> loc list `"`list' `r(varlist)' "'
>> }
>> di `"`list'"' //check this
>> drop `list'
>> *************!
>> 
>> - Eric
>> 
>> _
>> Eric A. Booth
>> Public Policy Research Institute
>> Texas A&M University
>> ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
>> +979.845.6754
>> 
>> 
>> On Apr 22, 2012, at 4:14 PM, Janet Hill wrote:
>> 
>>> I am importing a large dataset and, following various data manipulations, I generate new variables that have lower case names. To clean the dataset I need to delete all variables that start with an upper case letter. I can see the names in ds or findname (from SSC) but I can't work out how to select these names for deletion. I would be grateful for any advice on this. I am using Stata 12.
>>> 
> 
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