Renaming long list of variables with loop

[Oyinkansola Osunkoya]

Hello,

I am currently working with a data set with the unit of observation as households. There are also variables for each member of the household e.g hv101_01 for person one in the household, hv101_02 for the second person in the household and up to hv101_39, all of which contain the same label. This is is the case for many variables.

I will like to change the names of all variables to the label name. I was able to figure this out as:

foreach v of var * {
local lbl : var label `v'
local lbl = strtoname("`lbl'")
rename `v' `lbl'
label variable `lbl' "`v'"
}

But when it reaches the variables that are for the second member of the household e.g hv101_02, Stata says that the variable name is already defined. I know that this is because hv101_01 already has that variable name.

I will like to add _02 or whatever number is behind the variable when the variable is changed to the label name.
Can someone please help with a code for this.

Thank you for the anticipated response.

[Andrew Musau]

Do all variables end in an underscore followed by 2 digits ("_##")? If so,

foreach v of var * {
      local lbl : var label `v'
      local end=substr("`v'", -1, 2)
      rename `v' `lbl'_`end'
      label variable `lbl'_`end' `v'
}

[Nick Cox]

Cross-posted at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-loop-in-stata

Please note our policy on cross-posting, which is that you are asked to tell us about it.

[Oyinkansola Osunkoya]

Sorry, I did not know about that. Do I need to do anything else?

[Oyinkansola Osunkoya]

I do not get the desired result when I try out your code.

In the loop below, all the variables in the list hvidx_01 - hv124_39 all have an underscore followed by 2 digits ("_##")

foreach v of var hvidx_01 - hv124_39 {
local lbl : var label `v'
local end=substr("`v'", -1, 2)
rename `v' `lbl'_`end'
label variable `lbl'_`end' `v'
}

I included a picture of the error that I get:

[Andrew Musau]

You probably have spaces in your variable labels. Here is a fix, but there are length limits to Stata variable names, so you should start thinking about how sound your approach is.

foreach v of var hvidx_01 - hv124_39 {
         local lbl : var label `v'
         local lbl= subinstr("`lbl'"," ","_",.)
         local end=substr("`v'", -1, 2)
         rename `v' `lbl'_`end'
         label variable `lbl'_`end' `v'
 }

[Oyinkansola Osunkoya]

Thank you so much it now works. Yes I will take the length limits of Stata variable names into account and adjust where needed.