st: How do I store the value of an observation to a note?

[Aaron Kirkman <ak1795mailserv@gmail.com>]

Dear Statalist,

I have a raw data set that includes a --notes-- variable with
miscellaneous notes about the data set stored in each observation.
These notes aren't related to the observations with which they are
paired. I'm trying to loop through the observations and store each
value of the --notes-- variable to a new note in the dataset. So far,
I tried this:

##

sysuse auto, clear
quietly count
forvalues n = 1/`r(N)' {
	note: make[`n']
}
notes

##

but this stores the text -- make[...] -- to individual notes, as shown:

##

  1.  from Consumer Reports with permission
  2.  make[1]
  3.  make[2]
  4.  make[3]
  5.  make[4]
  6.  make[5]
  7.  make[6]
  8.  make[7]
  9.  make[8]
 10.  make[9]
...

##

I can write the notes to a file with code like this:
##

sysuse auto, clear
quietly count
file open fh using "notes.txt", write replace
forvalues n = 1/`r(N)' {
	file write fh (make[`n']) _n
}
file close fh

##

but I would like to store the notes to the dataset, if possible.
Simply wrapping parentheses around the -- notes[`n'] -- line in the
first sample, as done in the second sample, does not work (the
parentheses simply show up in the notes with the contents otherwise
unchanged).

Thank you,

Aaron Kirkman
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