st: Re: MIME-Version: 1.0

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

It will be easy to do in Stata (no cutting or pasting) but the best answer 
may depend on what these variables are named, whether they are string or 
numeric, and whether the ones to ignore contain missing values or something 
else.  Here are some examples:

* strings, all blank but one, easy to just concatenate:
gen mystring=string1+string2+string3+string4

* numeric var, all missing but one
gen mynumvar=.
foreach var of varlist numvar1 numvar2 numvar3 {
   replace mynumvar=`var' if !missing(`var')
}

Michael Blasnik


----- Original Message ----- 
From: <jsilberm@sas.upenn.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 8:56 AM
Subject: st: MIME-Version: 1.0



> Hi all,
>
> I have a single variable that was erroneously split into several 
> variables, and
> I need to re-merge many variables into a single variable.
>
> Within any single observation, just 1 of the variables to be merged has 
> data in
> it, and I need to get the data from all of the variables into a single
> variable.
>
> Short of lots of cutting and pasting, does anybody know exactly how to do 
> this?
>
> Apologies if this is a na�v� question; I'm a Stata novice.
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