Speaking Stata: How to Repeat Yourself without going Mad

Abstract

This column will focus on how to improve your fluency in Stata. Over the next issues we will look at Stata problems of intermediate size which turn out to be soluble with a few command lines. As an introduction, systematic ways of repeating the same or similar operations are surveyed to give one overview of the territory to be covered.

Keywords

pr0003 append by collapse contract do-files egen for foreach for-values log files merge naming conventions programs repetition reshape statsby subset or group structure tabulations

References

Cox

N. J.

, and Weesie

2001. dm88: Renaming variables, multiply and systematically. Stata Technical Bulletin 60: 4–6. In Stata Technical Bulletin Reprints, vol. 10, 41–44. College Station, TX: Stata Press.

Steichen

T. J.

, and Cox

N.J.

1998. dm53: Detection and deletion of duplicate observations. Stata Technical Bulletin 41: 2–4. In Stata Technical Bulletin Reprints, vol. 7, 52–55. College Station, TX: Stata Press.