Finding a match rowwise in several variables

[Nick Cox]

This question has appeared under different names as

http://www.talkstats.com/showthread....ther-variables

https://www.reddit.com/r/stata/comme...able_based_on/

with no replies to date. I know why I am not active in either place -- although manifestly I glance at both sites. Perhaps the person concerned knows why they will ask anywhere but Statalist!

Suppose I have a set of variables {x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8...}. I would like to generate a new variable that takes a value of 1 if x1=1 or if x2 =1 or if x3=1 etc...

I have been doing this crudely by:

gen newvar = 0
replace newvar = 1 if x1==1 | x2==1 | x2==1 etc...

I presume there is a tidier way of doing this? Any help is much appreciated.

Answer: There are at least three ways to do this:

* #1
gen newvar = 0

quietly forval j = 1/8 {
    replace newvar = 1 if x`j' == 1
}

* #2

gen newvar = inlist(1, x1, x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8)

* #3

egen newvar = anymatch(x1-x8), values(1)