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RE: st: ordering variables names by numbered suffix


From   "Dev Vencappa" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: ordering variables names by numbered suffix
Date   Mon, 26 Jul 2004 17:15:24 +0100

>
> 
Nick, thanks a lot. aorder TAL* worked fine with the hundreds of variables I have. Luckily, they all have a 4 digits suffixes.

Dev

>>> [email protected] 07/26/04 05:06pm >>>
. aorder TAL* 

should do this. That is, if all variables 
have the same prefix, in this case 
"TAL", then their sorted order is determined 
by what comes next. This should work 
if all suffixes are 4 digits. In that
case, alphanumeric (dictionary) order
coincides with numeric order. 

How might this go wrong? You might 
have a variable number of digits 

TAL42, TAL123, TAL4567, TAL13, ... 

but you want the order to be numeric, 
not alphanumeric. 

One way of getting that is something 
like (untested code) 

unab TAL : TAL* 
local TAL : subinstr local TAL "TAL" "", all 
numlist "`TAL'", sort 
local tal "`r(numlist)'" 
local TAL 
foreach v of local tal { 
	local TAL "`TAL' TAL`v'"
} 
order `TAL' 

That is, 

get the variable names into a local macro 
zap the common prefix
sort the suffixes, numerically 
put the prefix back in each case 

Nick 
[email protected] 

Dev Vencappa

> Stata users, is there any command that orders a set of 
> variable by numbered suffix of a variable? e.g I have the 
> following set of variable names:
> 
> TAL4123 TAL4568 TAL3457 TAL2397 TAL4357 etc.
> 
> The numbered suffixes are not in a continuous order, but I 
> would like to order them in ascending order of the suffix.

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