st: Generating a value depending on filename

[Jack Newsham <j.newsham@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

I'm working with state-by-state employment data on 51 Excel
spreadsheets that I plan to eventually append together and merge into
my main project file. Each spreadsheet is organized in columns
containing the year, month, and several measures of employment, with
only the name of the spreadsheet identifying the state whose data it
contains. I am attempting to create two variables -- "time" and
"state" -- to merge these data into my main file.

I'm somewhat of a Stata naif, however, and I'm running into a problem
when I try to generate "state" and give it a different value in every
spreadsheet. My use of  "if filename ==" and "if using" seem to be the
source of the problem, but I can't imagine how to generate a state
variable with a different value in each file. I've excerpted from my
do file, in relevant part. Can you advise? Is there a way to do this
in a loop? My thanks for any pointers.

foreach initials in AK AL AR AZ CA {
* The clear command is at the end of this loop.
import excel `initials'_labor_vars.xls, sheet("BLS Data Series") firstrow
* Create time variable by which to merge:
encode period,gen(monthnum)
gen time = (year * 100) + monthnum
* Create state variable by which to merge:
gen state = 01 if filename == "AL_labor_vars.xls" | 02 if filename ==
"AK_labor_vars.xls" |  ///
04 if filename == "AZ_labor_vars.xls" | 05 if filename ==
"AR_labor_vars.xls" | ///
06 if filename == "CA_labor_vars.xls"
}

Best,
Jack Newsham
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