Re: st: Unable to use "replace" on specific values (but others work ok)

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

A totally orthogonal comment is that (e.g.)

... if _n == 1

is a very inefficient alternative to (e.g)

... in 1

Not the issue here, but worth emphasis otherwise.

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:36 AM, Anna Reimondos <areimondos@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello statalisters,
> I am currently coding occupations of respondents in a survey to the
> Australian New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations
> (ANZSCO).
> A rather odd thing is happening where I am able to assign the ANZSCO
> code in some cases, but not others!
>
>
> For example in the code below there is no problem assigning the value
> 121312 to case 1, and no problem assigning the value 121314 to case 2.
> However for case 3 who I want to give the code 121313 the code returns
> an error message '121313 invalid name' r(198).
>
> clear
> set obs 3
> gen var1=.
> replace var1=121312 if _n==1
> replace var1=121314 if _n==2
>
> replace var1=121313 if _n==3  //Problem
>
> The problem is not just with 121313, but it also does not seem to like
> 254499, 323112 and 821311 among others.
> I don't understand what is happening!
>
> I am using Stata 12.1, but have also tried this in 11.2 and get the
> same error code.
>
> Thanks
>
>
> Anna
>
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