Creating and Saving graphs using loop

[Santosh Dash]

Dear Statalist Members,
I am working on a panel data set. I want to create graphs and save graphs by the country name.

If I use the following loop, it is creating graphs for all countries in my panel dataset. But it saves graphs by id such as 1.gph, 2.gph..... and so on.

levels country, local(countries)
local i = 1
foreach c of local countries {
twoway (line x y year if country=="`c'", title("`c'") ytitle(% of GDP) xtitle(Year))
graph save `i'.gph, replace
local i = `i' + 1
}
*

However, I WOULD LIKE TO SAVE GRAPHS BY COUNTRY NAME.

levels country, local(countries)
local i = 1
foreach c of local countries {
twoway (line x y year if country=="`c'", title("`c'") ytitle(% of GDP) xtitle(Year))
graph save `i'.gph, replace
local i = `i' + 1
}
*

This loop generates graphs and saves graphs IF THE COUNTRY NAME IS A SINGLE WORD. If the country name is India, the loop is fine. The loop stops working if the country name is MORE THAN 1 WORD such as United Kingdom or United States of America.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

[Dennis Lund Hansen]

Would -

graph save '=strtoname("'c'")'.gph, replace

solve your problem?

[Santosh Dash]

Yes . Thank you for your help.

[William Lisowski]

I believe you meant to write in your second loop

graph save `c'.gph, replace

so that the file would be the country name. And every filename that contains embedded spaces needs to be surrounded in quotation marks, so you can solve your problem with

graph save "`c'.gph", replace

or better yet, with compound quotes

graph save `"`c'.gph"', replace

For example

. local c Virgin Islands

. save `c'.dta, replace
invalid 'Islands.dta' 
r(198);

. save "`c'.dta", replace
file Virgin Islands.dta saved

. save `"`c'.dta"', replace
file Virgin Islands.dta saved

[Santosh Dash]

Thank you, Sir. Both the codes worked. Thank you a lot

[Santosh Dash]

Sir,
Inspired by your example, I was wondering if it is possible to create country-wise data files from a panel data set.

levels country, local(countries)
local i = 1
foreach c of local countries {
keep if state=="`c'"
save `c'.dta, replace
local i = `i' + 1
}
*
The loops runs successfully. But it is not creating data files for each country.
I know that the line

keep if state=="`c'"

has the problem
Kindly help.

[Dennis Lund Hansen]

Building on Lisowski's suggestion, perhaps the problem is in the save-command. Have you tried:

save `"`c'.dta"', replace

What happens when you run the loop? Does it not remove the irrelevant states, or does it not save the dataset?

[Santosh Dash]

Thank you for your reply.
Yes, I have already tried that.
But it is saving the original panel data set with the country names. The key in that loop is how to create a new data set for each country. Saving the new country-wise data set is not a problem since you and William Lisowski have suggested the way.

[Santosh Dash]

I found a way out. It is correctly creating a data sheet for each state. Here's the code:

levels state, local(states)
local i = 1

foreach c of local states {
  keep if state=="`c'"
  save "`c'.dta", replace
  use x.dta, clear
  local i = `i' + 1
}
*

The code may be simplified further.