Re: st: repeating strings

[Ian Watson <i.watson@econ.usyd.edu.au>]

There's a typo below (the reference to name being string should have 
been city). In the meantime, Scott's solution is infinitely more concise 
and elegant.
Ian


Ian Watson wrote:

> Try the following bit of code:
>
> use test, clear
> list
> gen id = _n
> reshape long city, i(id) j(year)
> list
> gsort name year -city
> list
> bys name year : replace city = city[1]
> list
> reshape wide city, i(id) j(year)
> list
>
>
> test is your dataset (I used the snippet of data you sent) and the list 
> commands can be removed once you've made sure all the transformations 
> are as you wished.
>
> The gsort is only necessary if name is a string variable (and blanks 
> come first). If it's a numeric code, then the missings will come last 
> anyway, so you can replace the gsort with sort and replace the  -city 
> with city.
>
> Regards
> Ian Watson
>
>
>
> MA V wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> > I believe that there is an easy answer for my problem but I can't seem 
> > to find it anywhere...
> > I have a table with the following format (this is a toy example where 
> > we have the cities in which each person has lived - city1 is where 
> > each person lived first):
> >
> > name city1 city2 city3
> > John  SF       .     .
> > John     .     Chi     .
> > John     .      .      LA
> > Mary      .      NY    .
> > Mary   Chi       .     .
> > ...
> >
> > What I would like to do is to fill in the missing values with the city 
> > strings, i.e. I would like to get at the end:
> >
> > name city1 city2 city3
> > John   SF     Chi    LA
> > John   SF     Chi     LA
> > John   SF      Chi    LA
> > Mary   Chi      NY    .
> > Mary   Chi      NY     .
> > ...
> >
> > Any suggestions?
> > Thanks!
> >
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