st: Creating Dummy variables with names from underlying variables

["Ben Hoen" <bhoen@lbl.gov>]

Hi all,

I have been noodling around with this for a bit and although I have found
many posts of how to create dummy variables (e.g.,
http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/data-management/creating-dummy-variables/)
, and how to apply values to labels (e.g., labmask), I have not yet found a
way to name variables after the values used to create the dummy variables.

I have a set of 30 or so zipcodes, that I want to create dummy variables
for, and which I would like to name for their respective zipcodes, e.g,
zip_08458, zip_25468, etc...

Take, for example:

set seed 1234
sysuse auto, clear
gen zipcode = 21210+ceil(5*runiform())
tab zipcode, g(zip_)

In this example I have five different zipcodes for which I created five
unique dummy variables.  I would like to be able to create or change the
name of the existing dummy variables "zip_1", "zip_2" etc. to include their
respective zip codes.  Therefore the names of the dummy variables would
ideally be "zip_21211", "zip_21212", "zip_21213", "zip_21214", and
"zip_21215".

Any ideas?

Thanks, as always, in advance.

Ben


Ben Hoen
Principal Research Associate
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Office: 845-758-1896
Cell: 718-812-7589
bhoen@lbl.gov
http://emp.lbl.gov/staff/ben-hoen

Visit our publications at: 
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