Re: st: Importing data with improper variable names

[Tirthankar Chakravarty <tirthankar.chakravarty@gmail.com>]

Here is quick fix. Use the -insheet, nonames- to read in the data
putting purported variable names in first row of data, fix the
variable names in the first row to proper Stata names and -rename-.
*********************************************
clear*
sysuse auto, clear
outsheet * using auto.raw, comma nolabel replace
insheet using auto.raw, nonames clear
replace v1 = "0000" in 1
replace v2 = "1111" in 1

foreach x of varlist _all {
	local varname `=`x'[1]'
	di "`varname'"
	cap confirm  new variable `varname'
	if _rc {
		local newvarname = strtoname("`varname'")
		rename `x' `newvarname'
	}
	else rename `x' `varname'
}
*********************************************

T
2010/8/3 Glenn Hoetker <ghoetker@igb.illinois.edu>:
> Greetings all.
>
> I have data downloaded as a text file from a website that comes in a form like
>
>        "Name", "2001", "2002", "2003"
>        "Fred", "3", "3", "0"
>
> It's just a text file, so I'd normally just use
>
>        insheet using data.text, names
>
> However, since variable names can't begin with a number, the last variables get renamed v3 v4 v5.  That's inconvenient, because it's meant to be a year.   I can manually rename v3 to year2001, etc., but would rather not do so--I'll be importing this data fairly often,  v3 may not always map to 2001, and there are actually many more years than I've shown here.
>
> Can anyone suggest a way around this problem?  I'm using Stata 11 and have access to StatTransfer.  I'm on a Mac, giving me access to both AppleScript and the standard Unix suite of tools to pre-process the file, but I'm rusty with those and would prefer a "pure Stata" solution if feasible.
>
> Thank you for any pointers.
>
> Glenn
>
> Glenn Hoetker
> Julian Simon Faculty Fellow in Business
> Associate Professor (Law, Institute for Genomic Biology)
> Director, Center for International Business Education and Research
> Faculty Fellow, Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership
> University of Illinois
> 217-265-4081
> ghoetker@illinois.edu
> http://www.business.uiuc.edu/ghoetker
>
>
> *
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>



-- 
To every ω-consistent recursive class κ of formulae there correspond
recursive class signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg(v Gen r)
belongs to Flg(κ) (where v is the free variable of r).

*
*   For searches and help try:
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*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/