st: loop thru unique values of a variable

[Matthias Schonlau <matt@rand.org>]

Hi all !

I am trying to loop through all unique values of a variable.

For example if the data set contains 9 observations and the variable of 
interest is D which takes the values 0 0 0 2 2 2 4 4 4
I would like to loop through the unique values 0 2 4  .

Below is a terrible "fix" which makes the additional assumption that the 
unique values are evenly spaced. ( I prefer not to make that 
assumption). It basically extracts the number of unique values from 
*inspect*, finds the minimum value through *summarize* and then 
constructs the loop from scratch .

quietly inspect D
local nu=r(N_unique)
quietly sum D
local dmin = r(min)
local last = `nu' * `dmin'

forvalues d= `dmin'(`dmin') `last' {
...
}

Is there a better way to do that in stata or is that just not what stata 
was built for ?

Thanks for any suggestions ,

Matt

--
Matt Schonlau
310-393-0411 x7682
http://www.rand.org/methodology/stat/members/matt/


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