st: RE: RE: repeating strings

["Nick Cox" <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Note that this (good) technique is correct if and 
only if each person named by -name- names at most
one city in each variable. If a person was recorded as naming two
or more cities, then the last in alphabetical 
order would be used to overwrite all others for that person. 
Hence a more paranoid programmer would do something like 
this: 

foreach var of varlist city* {
 	qui bysort name (`var'): replace `var' = `var'[_N] if missing(`var') 
	bysort name (`var') : assert `var'[1] == `var'[_N] 
} 

The -replace- thus would overwrite missings only. 

The assertion would fail if there were different city names 
for each -name- as then the -sort- would shake them apart. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Scott Merryman
 
> I believe this will work:
> 
> foreach var of varlist city* {
> 	qui bysort name (`var'): replace `var' = `var'[_N]
> }
 
MA V

> > I believe that there is an easy answer for my problem but I 
> can't seem to
> > find it anywhere...
> > I have a table with the following format (this is a toy 
> example where we
> > have the cities in which each person has lived - city1 is where each
> > person
> > lived first):
> > 
> > name city1 city2 city3
> > John  SF       .     .
> > John     .     Chi     .
> > John     .      .      LA
> > Mary      .      NY    .
> > Mary   Chi       .     .
> > ...
> > 
> > What I would like to do is to fill in the missing values 
> with the city
> > strings, i.e. I would like to get at the end:
> > 
> > name city1 city2 city3
> > John   SF     Chi    LA
> > John   SF     Chi     LA
> > John   SF      Chi    LA
> > Mary   Chi      NY    .
> > Mary   Chi      NY     .
> > ...
> > 

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