st: Variables loop and deletion under certain conditions

[Nuno Soares <ndsoares@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I'm having a problem regarding a data management task. I have several
.csv files that I need to import and treat in Stata. Each file has a
variable number of columns (which are variables) that cannot be
determined beforehand, and are imported into Stata as v1, v2, ...
Also, some of these variables/columns have no data which the database
from where they were extracted identifies with an #ERROR message in
line 5. What I need is to delete these variables when the error
message is present. I tried, without success,  the following piece of
code:

foreach varname of varlist v*{
	drop `varname' if `varname'[5]=="#ERROR"
}

However Stata returns the following error code:

invalid syntax
r(198);

Any ideas of why it isn't working? This should be straightforward, but
I can't understand why it isn't working...

Best wishes,

Nuno
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