st: Re: RE: how to obtain a unique identifier from strings

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

Actually, that code would give you the count for each name, not assign 
unique identifiers.  There are many ways to get what you want, but egen 
id=group(name) is probably the easiest.

Michael Blasnik
michael.blasnik@verizon.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kallimanis, Bellinda" <bkallimanis@fmhi.usf.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:58 AM
Subject: st: RE: how to obtain a unique identifier from strings



> bysort name: gen id = _N
>
> This should do the trick
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Teresio
> Poggio
> Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:47 AM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: st: how to obtain a unique identifier from strings
>
> Dear statalisters,
>
> this may be an elementary question but I could not find a solution in
> Stata documentation and the list archives, so here I am...
>
> I'm working (Stata 9/SE) with a quite large dataset (>300.000 records)
> with observation on individuals. Each individual may be related to
> more than one record. The structure is as following:
>
>
> Teresio    0     1     0
> Mario      1     2     0
> Teresio    1     1    2
> ....
>
> I'ld like to convert a string variable "Name" into a unique numerical
> identifier and obtain something like this:
>
> 1            0     1     0
> 2            1     2     0
> 1            1     1    2
> ....
>
> Is there any way to do this job in Stata?
> I've tryed with the encode command, but Stata stopped because there
> are more than 65000 unique values (by the way: I don't care about
> labels ...).
>
>
> Any help would be appreciated,
>
> Teresio
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