Friedrich is correct: there is an extended-macro-function called format. Thus Nick's general-purpose program to make every string variable left-just (better then mine, in that it works on the whole dataset) can be written as
ds, has(type string)
foreach v in `r(varlist)' {
local f : format `v'
local ff : subinstr local f "%" "%-%"
format `v' `ff'
}
No shorter, but more to the point.
Kit
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