Patrick Joly
>
> In my earlier posting, I wrote
> > -xpose- seems to object when the _varname variable contains the
> > string values v1, v2, ..., vN. For instance,
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > . list
> > _varname myvar
> > 1. v1 1
> > 2. v2 2
> > 3. v3 3
> > 4. v4 4
> > 5. v5 5
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > . xpose, clear
> > v1 already defined
> > r(110);
> >
>
> and Scott Merryman replied
> > Perhaps the problem is not the values of the variable
> > but the variable name.
> >
> > If you rename _varname xpose seems to work.
>
> I meant to suggest that -xpose- complains when _varname
> takes on the
> string values "v" plus an integer. Scott's suggestion is not a
> solution since -xpose- will only fetch the variable names from a
> variable called _varname if it "exists in the data before
> transposition
> (see help for xpose). If it doesn't, Stata uses the
> generic names v1,
> v2, ..., vN. Scott's example appeared to be solution because the
> variables names of the transposed data turned out to
> correspond to the
> rows of _varname. But this was merely a fluke. It
> occurred because
> the first observation of _varname was v1, the second was
> v2, etc. But
> it needn't be so. _varname could look like,
>
> _varname
> 1. v5
> 2. v9
> 3. foo
> 4. boo
> 5. v3
> 6. blah
>
> and I should have made that clear in my earlier posting.
> Invoking -
> xpose- with the above values, Stata would balk and tell me
> that either
> v5, v9 or v3 already exists when in fact this isn't true.
>
> Consider this slightly modified example,
>
> clear
> set seed 1234
> set type double
> set obs 10
> g str1 _varname = ""
> replace _varname = "v" + string(_n+5)
> replace _varname = "boo" in 3
> replace _varname = "foo" in 6
> g myvar = round(uniform()*10,1)
>
> . list
>
> _varname myvar
> 1. v6 5
> 2. v7 3
> 3. boo 3
> 4. v9 4
> 5. v10 9
> 6. foo 9
> 7. v12 5
> 8. v13 1
> 9. v14 3
> 10. v15 1
>
> . xpose, clear
> v6 already defined
> r(110);
>
>
> Feature or bug? Looks like the latter to me since all values are
> perfectly legitimate variable names.
>
> I also wrote yesterday that situations similar to these
> arise for me
> because I must: 1) load data which does not necessarily
> contain names
> for each variable (via -insheet-), some do some don't; 2)
> transpose it
> once; 3) perform certain operations; and 4) transpose it again. I
> cannot append a prefix or a suffix to the string values in _varname
> since some may already be at the 32-character limit for names.
>
A hack of -xpose- to -xpose2- along these
lines solves this problem.
Warning: I have not tested carefully to
see if there are any nasty side-effects.
2c2
< program define xpose
---
> program define xpose2
33,34c33,36
< if r(N)==1 {
< local vr "v1"
---
> local nv = r(N)
> forval i = 1 / `nv' {
> tempname new
> local vr "`vr' `new'"
36d37
< else local vr = "v1-v" + string(r(N))
128c129,130
< rename v`i' `1'
---
> local v : word `i' of `vr'
> rename `v' `1'
Nick
[email protected]
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