st: recode foreach with sysmis versus dot

[annoporci <annoporci@gmail.com>]

Dear Statalist,

My question here is pure curiosity as I have found a workaround. No  
urgency.

In a dataset I have, I need to replace zeros with "missing" for all  
variables in the dataset.

A recent statalist exchange suggested the use of recode with a foreach  
loop. That suggestion was to turn a missing value into zeros --- the  
reverse of what I'm after --- so I tried to adapt the suggestion:

recode myvar (mis = 0)

The reverse:

recode myvar (0 = mis)

But that and other similar attempts failed. The "dot" sysmiss approach  
worked, so that's what I'm using now:

recode myvar (0 = .)

<CODE>
 use auto,clear
 local variables rep78
 foreach var of varlist `variables'{
*   recode `var'(3=mis) /// fails
*   recode `var'(3=sysmiss) /// fails
*   recode `var'(3=missing) /// fails
*   recode `var'(3=`missing') /// fails
*   recode `var'(3=-9999) /// works
   recode `var'(3=.) /// works
 }
<\CODE>

Reference:
http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2010-08/msg00410.html
http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?missing

--
Patrick Toche.
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