Re: st: how to add 23 in each row of a variable

[Martin Weiss <mw.stlist@googlemail.com>]

I see braod agreement on the solution. This thread is a tough reminder, 
though, of the difficulties that can sometimes seem insurmountable for 
beginners in Stata. Having had a distraught student walk into my office a 
couple of days ago with the exact same problem, I think it is extremely 
important to emphasize that Stata does not exactly "push" subscripting as a 
solution to data management problems. I would have trouble recalling a 
single instance where subscripting has proved necessary for me in Stata...

Martin Weiss
_______________________
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Eva Poen" <eva.poen@gmail.com>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2008 8:10 PM
Subject: Re: st: how to add 23 in each row of a variable



> Fabian,
>
> er, no need for a loop. May
>
> replace number = number + 23
>
> be what you want?
>
> The code for your (unnecessary!) loop as a few mistakes which I am
> going to correct anyway.
> If you use -while-, you have to increment your counter macro inside the 
> loop:
> local i 1
> while `i' < 100 {
> ....
> local ++i
> }
>
> Else you have an infinite loop, because the initial condition is
> always true. -foreach- and -forvalues- are usually much better
> choices, and run faster, I believe.
>
> Your condition -while `i' < _N- leaves out the last observation. Next,
> number[i] should read number[`i']. _However_, none of this is
> necessary! Use -generate- and -replace-.
>
> Eva
>
>
> 2008/9/15 Fabian Brenner <Fabian.Brenner@gmx.de>:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > how can I tell Stata to add 23 in each row of a variable in the dataset?
> >
> > I do not know what I am doing wrong because it does not work like this:
> >
> > local i=1
> > while `i'<_N {
> >  2. replace number[i]= number[`i'] + 23
> >  3. }
> >
> > Thanks for your help.
> > Fabian
> >
> > P.S. Thanks a lot to Neil for the help.
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