st: Extracting variable names for use as string lists

["David Fisher" <djfisher81@msn.com>]

Hi all,

Is there any way to create a list of variable names, either in string form 
or some other way, that could then be manipulated using "foreach" and the 
like?

The problem I have is as follows:
I would like to rename multiple variables in a consistent way -- that is, to 
abbreviate their names to 8 characters if they are any longer than this 
(using 'abbrev').  I would like to use a structure something like:

foreach x in [list of variable names] {
	if length(`x')>8 {
		rename `x' abbrev(`x',8)
		}
	}

Thanks for your help.
David Fisher.


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