Re: st: Drop columns based on an argument

[Jeph Herrin <stata@spandrel.net>]

Not sure exactly what makes your identifiers "not valid", but here's how to fix your code and strip out your PEs all at 
once:

forvalues i=2(1)1285{
	replace var`i'=subinstr(var`i',"(PE)","",.)   in 1
	if var`i'[1]=="#ERROR" {
		drop var`i'
	}
}

cheers,
Jeph



On 3/27/2013 3:15 PM, thomas bourveau wrote:
> Dear Statalist members,
>
> I have a dataset that I will have to reshape but I am facing two
> challenges for now. My dataset is currently organized as follows:
>
> The first column (var1) contains different dates.
>
> The next columns (var2-var1285) contains my variable of interest.
> However, the first line contains the identifier of the firm and then
> the value of the variable of interest.
>
>
> My first problem is that some identifiers are not valid, and then the
> first line returns an error message (string format). I want to drop
> all columns with an error message. I have tried the following code:
>
> forvalues i=2(1)1285{
> drop var`i' if var`i'[1]=="#ERROR"
> }
>
> However, it returns the following message: "invalid syntax".
>
> My second problem is that the valid identifiers are of the following
> form, 6 figures ending by (PE):
>
> example : 123456(PE)
>
> I need to eliminate the (PE) at the end of each identifier. I have
> tried to use the regex command but it did not worked well.
>
> I welcome any idea !
>
> Thanks in advance
> Best
> Thomas
>
> --
> Thomas Bourveau
> thomas.bourveau@gmail.com
> 0637573925
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/