st: renaming variables based on long labels

["Cohen, Elan" <cohened@upmc.edu>]

Statalisters,

I have a dataset with variable names VAR1-VAR40.  All variables have (pretty long) labels.  I'm using 

foreach var of varlist VAR* {
	rename `var' `=strtoname("`:var lab `var''")'
}

to rename each variable according to their label.  I'm running into a problem because the variable labels are not unique within the first 32 characters and so I'm getting "Relationship_of_interviewee_to_s already defined".

Can Stata automatically generate a unique name based on existing variables?  This seems like it's possible based on the following output:

webuse bg2
renvars, prefix(longprefix)
su

where Stata truncates variables names and automatically finds a unique string to display for each variable (-findit renvars-).

Thanks for any help you can provide,

- Elan


--
Elan D Cohen, MS
Center for Research on Health Care Data Center
University of Pittsburgh
cohened@upmc.edu


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