st: Basic Numeric to String Recoding

["Benhoen2" <benhoen2@earthlink.net>]

I am a new user - please forgive me.

I have a list of numeric IDs for states (stateid) with abbreviated labels
attached (stname). I would like to create a new string variable made us of
the unabbreviated state names but based on the stateid variable.

I have tried the following: 
1) recode stateid (1="Alabama"), (2="Arkansas"), ..., generate(statename)
2) recode stateid (1="Alabama"), (2="Arkansas"), ..., strgen(statename)
3) generate state="Alabama" if stateid=1

among other nonsensical permutations.  Is there any way to do this using
recode, or something analogous?

I suspect the answer is very simple but I have not been able to figure it
out.  Any help?

Ben


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