Count total number of non-missing strings in a row

[Krishna Prasad Srinivasan]

Hi there!

I am working on extracting information from text data and was wondering if there is a way to count the number of non-missing variables in each row. The following is what my dataset looks like. I would like a variable that shows how many variables are non-empty by row (e.g. 2 in row 1, 2 in row 2, so forth).

One option I considered is to encode the string variables and use egen's -rownonmiss-. However, that seems a bit roundabout. Is there an alternative?

Thanks very much!
Krishna

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str7 var1 str6 var2 str5 var3
"asdfdgf" ""       "mnbvc"
""        "qwerty" "mnbvc"
""        "qwerty" ""     
"asdfdgf" "qwerty" "mnbvc"
"asdfdgf" "qwerty" "mnbvc"
end

[Nick Cox]

Thanks for the data example. You missed the strok option that makes your work-around unnecessary.

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str7 var1 str6 var2 str5 var3
"asdfdgf" ""       "mnbvc"
""        "qwerty" "mnbvc"
""        "qwerty" ""     
"asdfdgf" "qwerty" "mnbvc"
"asdfdgf" "qwerty" "mnbvc"
end

egen wanted = rownonmiss(var?) , strok 

list 

     +-----------------------------------+
     |    var1     var2    var3   wanted |
     |-----------------------------------|
  1. | asdfdgf            mnbvc        2 |
  2. |           qwerty   mnbvc        2 |
  3. |           qwerty                1 |
  4. | asdfdgf   qwerty   mnbvc        3 |
  5. | asdfdgf   qwerty   mnbvc        3 |
     +-----------------------------------+

[Krishna Prasad Srinivasan]

Oh, that's right! Thanks very much, Nick Cox and Jean-Claude Arbaut!