st: Re: value labels for strings: last comments

[baum <baum@bc.edu>]

--On Monday, October 28, 2002 2:33 -0500 Richard wrote:

> Subject: st: RE: Re: value labels for string variables
>
> It requires several extra steps. And encoding one database results in
> different encodes for another. But most generally,  suppose I had several
> variables with the same code set?  - as is the case.
These issues display a fundamental misunderstanding of the underlying 
concepts.
There is only one set of definitions linking short and long forms of the 
string variable, thus only one data set containing those definitions, which 
may be merged onto any number of other 'real' datasets, which will then 
contain the long forms of the strings.

The fact that '111' may refer to the 111th disease in integer variable 
'diseasecodes' and the 111th zip code in 'zipcodes' is immaterial. They 
will still display the appropriate contents.

Erik S. said he didn't want to modify a number of huge data sets, which are 
used by others. If Stata did have a command to crwate long labels as 
aliases for short labels, how would one attach the long labels without 
modifying the data sets on disk? The point is, Stata does have commands 
that will enable this feature, and they are just about as succinct as they 
can imaginably be. You do only need set up the definitions of short and 
long labels once, and merge them--once--onto a dataset in which you want 
the long labels. You can also apply that definition to any variable(s) you 
choose--e.g. if you have the patient's zip code and the physician's zip 
code, and want them each displayed as city|state, just merge 'zipcodes' 
(containing zip+4 and city,state) with each string-encoded zip code 
variable.

Kit
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