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st: RE: extract portion of variable name to use in variable label


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   st: RE: extract portion of variable name to use in variable label
Date   Mon, 9 Jun 2008 16:56:20 +0100

foreach v of var * { 
	local last = substr("`v'", -2, 2) 
	local last = cond("`last'" == "al", "Achievement Level",
"Scalescore") 
	local first = substr("`v'", 3, .) 
	local first = substr("`first'", 1, strpos("`first'", "_") - 1) 
	label var `v' "`first' `last'" 
} 

-----Original Message-----
Andy Baxter

I have a large data set in which the variable names reflect the subject 
and metric of a specific test, e.g., a_alg1_ss is the "Algebra 1 Scale 
Score."
All of the variable names have a common structure:  a prefix of a_, a 
test identifier string, and a suffix of _[metric of test, e.g., al for 
achievement level or ss for scale score].
The current variable labels reflect the test metric, but not the test 
identifier.

Here is a subset of the variables:

. describe  a_alg1_ss   a_alg1_al a_alg1rt1_ss   a_alg1rt1_al

              storage  display     value
variable name   type   format      label      variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
a_alg1_ss       int    %8.0g                   Scalescore
a_alg1_al       byte   %8.0g                   Achievement Level
a_alg1rt1_ss    int    %8.0g                   Scalescore
a_alg1rt1_al    byte   %8.0g                   Achievement Level

I am trying to write syntax that will extract the test identifier from 
the variable name and insert it into the variable label.  I would like 
to wind up with:

variable name                     variable label
a_alg1_ss                           alg1 Scalescore
a_alg1_al                           alg1 Achievement Level
a_alg1rt1_ss                       alg1rt Scalescore
a_alg1rt1_al                        alg1rt Achievement Level

My Stata version is:
 .about
Stata/SE 9.2 for Windows
Born 20 Jul 2007


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