Re: st: rename

["Airey, David C" <david.airey@vanderbilt.edu>]

.

If I had 1000 variables and wanted to rename them to a
list of another 1000 names, what is the best way to do this?
There are no stubs, so I cannot use the rename group command

rename (stub1-stub1000) (mystub1-mystub1000)

I can probably get the variable names inside a single local
more easily after which I might expect this to work:

rename (`original') (`newnames')

> -rename- as such places absolutely no restrictions on the use of
> locals in -rename- commands for the very simple and very fundamental
> reason that all macro references are interpreted before -rename- gets
> to work. -rename- never sees any macro references, just their
> interpretations as macro contents.
> 
> That said, let's emphasise that -rename-'s language is based on
> extensive use of wildcards.
> 
> Either way, the heart of David's question seems to be whether a common
> stub is needed for -rename- to work well, if at all, and the answer is
> No.
> 
> -rename- can be used with a first argument as general as (*), meaning
> all variables, so there are no presumptions on the structure of
> variable names.
> 
> Otherwise I think we need to see concrete examples to comment on
> apparent difficulties here.
> 
> Nick
> 
> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Airey, David C
> <david.airey@vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
> 
> > With the new rename group command, can you use locals to rename a very
> > large number of variables from an old name set to a new name set where
> > there will be no stub used in either set?
> >
> > The syntax is
> >
> > rename (old1 old2) (new1 new2)
> >
> > but can locals be used inside the parentheses to represent a long list
> > of variable names to be switched? I can generate the locals using code
> > rather than typing.
> >
> > Otherwise, what is the best way to rename a whole bunch of variables
> > to new names where the variables do not have stubs.
> >
> > I can do the renaming using a reshape and merge, but it seems clunky.


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