counter in a loop

[Sa Fe]

Hi,

I am running a loop in which I have a variable and 10 iterations. I want to set the variable name, starting with a number in each iteration, so that the variable's name be something like "1 x" in the first iteration, "2 x" in the second, and so on and so forth. I would appreciate any solution. Thanks,

[Ali Atia]

Are you using a forvalues loop? In that case the counter is just the local macro created by the loop:

forval x = 1/10{
gen `x'x = .
}

Otherwise, create a local macro before the loop and add one to it at the end of each iteration:

local x = 1
foreach i of local ten_items{
gen `x'x = .
local ++x
}

[Joro Kolev]

Variable names cannot start with a number, and cannot have a space within them.

. clear

. set obs 3
number of observations (_N) was 0, now 3

. gen 1x = 7
1x invalid name
r(198);

. gen 1 x = 7
1 invalid name
r(198);

[Ali Atia]

Joro is right, of course -- simply use x`x' instead of `x'x in the code from #2.