Changing value labels (dropping a part of value labels)

[rachita vig]

Hi everyone,

I am working on a dataset which has coded variables whose labels are for example, like, "1. Yes; 0. No" or "10. Raj; 11. UP; 12. HP" etc. Basically all label values contain digits in the beginning of the label but the number of digits could differ depending on the variable.

I want to change the value labels such that the digits are dropped and I only retain the string value in all such variables, that is, "Yes; No" etc.

It would be great if someone can let me how I can do the above in an efficient manner than having to redefine the label values for each.

Thank you

[daniel klein]

Depending on the details,

numlabel , remove

will do the trick.

This will work only if the numbers that are part of the text in value labels are the same as the integer values they are mapped to. For example, if the label, say yesno, were defined as

. label list yesno
yesno:
           0 0. No
           1 1. Yes

the code above will remove 0. and 1. However, in

. label list yesno
yesno:
           0 73. No
           1 42. Yes

numlabel will not work.

Get back if you need a more flexible approach.

[Maarten Buis]

Looks like the result of using numlabel . That is nice when preparing the data, but for presenting the final analysis you typically want to remove that again, like in your question. Fortunately, the numlabel command has the remove option. Just typing numlabel, remove should do the trick.

[rachita vig]

Thanks a lot Daniel and Maarten!

Daniel, while my dataset pertains to case #1 as you described - it would be great to also know what to do under case #2.

Best,
Rachita

[daniel klein]

- it would be great to also know what to do under case #2.

The second example in #2 is just that: an example. Thus, the details will be important. That aside, the text in value labels are strings. Strings can be manipulated by string functions (and extended macro functions, but let's stick with string functions for now). elabel (SSC) applies string functions to value labels. If all value labels follow the pattern

#. text

then

elabel define * (= #) (= substr(@, strpos(@, ".")+2, .)) , modify

That code will, however, mess up value labels that do not follow the specific pattern.