st: Reshape issue

[James Bernard <jamesstatalist@gmail.com>]

Dear list members,

I was trying to reshape my dataset from wide to long, and realized
that the the identifier of each case has to be unique. The problem is
actually with the shape of my data-set. I cannot use -duplicates drop-
to do teh job due to the nature of my dataset which looks like this:


   Firm          sales_1990        sales_1991        sales_1992
--------------    --------------------     ------------------
-----------------------
ABC                10                      missing              missing
ABC                 missing              23                     missing
ABC                  missing            missing                15
CDF
.
.
.
GFP


it is panel data so the same thing goes for CDF and GFP

As you can see, I cannot make the cases unique.

Is there any way out of this quagmire?

I was thinking about finding a command that can make the sales in each
year being repeated for each firm. Then I could use _duplicates drop-
command.

I appreciate your help!

Thanks,
James
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