Store a value

[Christian Fink]

Hello,

let's say I have a variable x with data from 1 to 10. How can Stata save the maximum of x (10) as placeholder, which can be used in an if loop or forval i=1/.....

Thank you!

[Maarten Buis]

sum x, meanonly
local max = r(max)

[Daniel Feenberg]

Stata doesn't save scalars and macros with .dta files - -save- isn't a "workspace save". If you are very ambitious this link

https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...or-alternative

suggests how you might add machine readable information to a dta file using -notes- and -notes_-. See also

https://www.stata.com/help.cgi?notes_

[Joro Kolev]

Maarten showed how you can save this to a local, but generally you typically do not need to save this most of the time. This is because the calculation is fast, and it is more headache to carry the result, rather than just calculate it again on the fly.

Just use the

summarize x, meanonly

immediately before your loop, and directly refer to r(max).