Importing .shp file to Stata with "long" varname

[Francesca Cavallaro]

Hello,

I am trying to import a .shp shapefile containing English local authorities into Stata using shp2dta user written command, but I get an error message saying "long invalid varname" (signalling that the shapefile dataset includes a variable named "long", which is an invalid variable name within Stata - if I have understood correctly).

Is there a way of amending the varname within the shp2dta command to successfully import it?

Or is it necessary to use a workaround by e.g. importing into R to rename/delete the variable called "long" (as noted by Carolin Thol in this previous post: https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...files-in-stata)? If anyone has successfully done this and is happy to share steps, that would be much appreciated (I have managed to upload into R, but it does not display like a "normal" dataset so I have not found a way of amending the variable).

Many thanks!
Francesca

[Francesca Cavallaro]

Hi All,

Carolin Thol Ioramashvili kindly shared her code for deleting/renaming the variable named long in RStudio. Please see her code with my adaptations below:

# Clear workspace
rm(list = ls())
setwd("S:/Maps/LA GPS data/")

# Load packages
library(sp)
library(maptools)
library(sf)
library(plyr)


# Read the shapefile

country <- readShapeSpatial("Local_Authority_Districts_December_2017_Super_Generalised_Clipped_Boundaries_in_Great_Britain.shp")

LA_boundaries <- st_read("S:/Maps/LA GPS data/Local_Authority_Districts_December_2017_Super_Generalised_Clipped_Boundaries_in_Great_Britain.shp")
st_bbox(aoi_boundary_HARV)
st_geometry_type(aoi_boundary_HARV)

# Draw the map to check it looks alright
plot(country)

# Option 1 - Remove the long variable
# country@data$long <- NULL

# Option 2 - Rename long variable
names(country)[names(country)=="long"] <- "longi"

# Check it's been changed
head(country@data)

ogrDrivers()

# Write the new shapefile
writeOGR(country, dsn = "S:/Maps/LA GPS data/", layer = "newLAboundaries", driver = "ESRI Shapefile"  )

Additionally, I hadn't realised that in the original forum post Robert Picard had also kindly provided the answer for editing the variable name in Stata (see code from "* fix the database part of the shapefile" to "* convert the database and coordinates part to Stata datasets").
Thanks, Francesca