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Re: st: rename


From   Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To   [email protected]
Subject   Re: st: rename
Date   Tue, 7 Aug 2012 23:55:22 +0100

You are repeating the same misunderstanding. -rename group- does not
depend on there being stubs.

sysuse auto
rename (*) (<new list>)

will work.

Nick

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 9:29 PM, Airey, David C
<[email protected]> wrote:
> .
>
> If I had 1000 variables and wanted to rename them to a
> list of another 1000 names, what is the best way to do this?
> There are no stubs, so I cannot use the rename group command
>
> rename (stub1-stub1000) (mystub1-mystub1000)
>
> I can probably get the variable names inside a single local
> more easily after which I might expect this to work:
>
> rename (`original') (`newnames')
>
>> -rename- as such places absolutely no restrictions on the use of
>> locals in -rename- commands for the very simple and very fundamental
>> reason that all macro references are interpreted before -rename- gets
>> to work. -rename- never sees any macro references, just their
>> interpretations as macro contents.
>>
>> That said, let's emphasise that -rename-'s language is based on
>> extensive use of wildcards.
>>
>> Either way, the heart of David's question seems to be whether a common
>> stub is needed for -rename- to work well, if at all, and the answer is
>> No.
>>
>> -rename- can be used with a first argument as general as (*), meaning
>> all variables, so there are no presumptions on the structure of
>> variable names.
>>
>> Otherwise I think we need to see concrete examples to comment on
>> apparent difficulties here.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 6:27 PM, Airey, David C
>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> > With the new rename group command, can you use locals to rename a very
>> > large number of variables from an old name set to a new name set where
>> > there will be no stub used in either set?
>> >
>> > The syntax is
>> >
>> > rename (old1 old2) (new1 new2)
>> >
>> > but can locals be used inside the parentheses to represent a long list
>> > of variable names to be switched? I can generate the locals using code
>> > rather than typing.
>> >
>> > Otherwise, what is the best way to rename a whole bunch of variables
>> > to new names where the variables do not have stubs.
>> >
>> > I can do the renaming using a reshape and merge, but it seems clunky.
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