st: Updating IDs in a foreach loop

["Florian Seliger" <florian.seliger@gmx.de>]

Dear Statalist,

I have specified a "foreach" loop for about 250 company files.
Each file has an ID variable with values between 1-100,000.
At the end of the loop, I want to ask STATA to create an ID that uniquely identifies each dataset.
I have created a unique label for each ID variable, but I also want to give them a number or a company-specific name.

Please take a look at the example below. At the end, "sic_cited_acer_consolidated2.dta" should have an ID variable named "id_1",
"sic_cited_adobe_consolidated2.dta" should have an ID variable "id_2",
and so on. The problem is how to update the number of id_1 after the first file has been accomplished.

An even better alternative would be to have an ID variable "id_acer", "id_adobe", and so on, but renaming with a name that includes the filename `file' yields an "invalid name".

Example:

foreach file in "acer.dta" "adobe.dta" "affiliated.dta" ...   {
use "`file'"
keep id sic_* sic 

....(a lot of other commands)...

rename id id_1
label var id_1 "`file'" 
save "sic_cited_`file'", replace
}


Thank you in advance,
Florian

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