Re: st: RE: How to get a list of the names of characters associated with a variable

[Eric Booth <ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu>]

>

Nevermind--I didn't read the helpfile carefully enough.  It says " has(char problem) selects all  variables with a characteristic named problem."

So, I have to specify the name of the char with -ds-

**
sysuse auto, clear
note mpg: inverse of good measure
char mpg[one] test

ds, has(char one)
di "`r(varlist)'"
**

~ Eric
__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute
Texas A&M University
ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
Office: +979.845.6754


On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:49 PM, Eric Booth wrote:

>> 
> 
> When I saw Austin's solution for searching the char of the variables, my first thought was that -ds- should be able to do that--but I couldn't get it to work with -ds-.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong here :
> 
> **
> sysuse auto, clear
> note mpg: inverse of good measure
> 
> ds, has(char *meas*)
> 	di "`r(varlist)'"
> ds, has(char *m*)
> 	di "`r(varlist)'"
> ds, has(note "inverse of good measure")
> 	di "`r(varlist)'"
> 
> **
> 
> Also, Austin's note on using index() is an important warning for the example I posted as well.
> 
> ~ Eric
> 
> __
> Eric A. Booth
> Public Policy Research Institute
> Texas A&M University
> ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu
> Office: +979.845.6754
> 
> On Mar 4, 2010, at 3:20 PM, Austin Nichols wrote:
> 
>> Clyde Schechter:
>> Try this example:
>> 
>> prog lookfc
>> version 8.2
>> syntax [varlist], t(string)
>> foreach v of varlist `varlist' {
>> loc c: char `v'[]
>> loc nall 0
>> foreach i of local c {
>> loc j: char `v'[`i']
>> loc k: subinstr loc j `"`t'"' "", all count(loc n)
>> loc nall=`nall'+`n'
>> }
>> if `nall' > 0 {
>> loc var `var' `v'
>> }
>> }
>> if "`var'"!="" ds `var'
>> end
>> sysuse auto, clear
>> note mpg: inverse of good measure
>> lookfc, t(meas)
>> 
>> One problem with using index() or strpos() is that they will truncate
>> strings; according to -help limits-, the maximum length of the
>> contents of a characteristic is 8,681 characters for Small Stata and
>> 67,784 characters for Stata/IC, Stata/SE, and Stata/MP.
>> 
>> On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 3:44 PM, Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> Perhaps you mean characteristics. See -help extended_fcn-.
>>> 
>>> Nick
>>> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>>> 
>>> Clyde Schechter MA, MD
>>> 
>>> I'm trying to write an ado file that will generalize the -lookfor-
>>> command
>>> so that it also searches for the target text in characters associated
>>> with
>>> variables.  (I need this because I have a data set with a large number
>>> of
>>> variables, and the key information is often found not in the label
>>> [which
>>> was truncated at 80 characters], but in a character--and the characters




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