Re: st: programming loops efficiently

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

See the thread starting

http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-10/msg00919.html

for both general and specific advice.

Nick

On Wed, Nov 14, 2012 at 9:53 AM, Breeze, Elizabeth <e.breeze@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
> I am creating some variables and I am sure that my syntax is needlessly long where there is a repeat pattern to the commands.
>
> I have variables  Vh01-Vh25 which give the number of hours worked by persons number 01-25 respectively.
> I want to find which person worked maximum hours and what that maximum was
> egen maxhr = rowmax(Vh01-Vh25)  gives me the maximum number of hours
>
> Is there a quick way to find the person number with the max no. hours by taking advantage of those last two digits of Vh01-Vh25?
>  I can do it with many lines of syntax but am sure there must be a neater way using some form of loop.
> Each record in the dataset concerns one interviewee and persons 01-25 are people who work for the interviewee
>
> A further complication is that more than one person may work that maximum number of hours.
>
> Also is there an equivalent to rowmax that gives the second to largest value in the series?
>
> Grateful for any tips.    I am not a programmer
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