New variable creation loop

[Eleni Moschou]

Hi everyone! I am having some trouble creating new variables. My goal is for the name of the variable to be looped. To be precise, I want to create as many variables as the max value of another variable called cal_year_duration, and then the name of the new variable should be Y1 if year_duration =1, Y2 if year_duration=2. My code to this point looks like this and there is a sample of data below, but I'm pretty sure I am doing something wrong so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

forvalues i=1 & i<=max(cal_year_duration) {
gen Y`i'= .
}

. dataex cal_year_duration

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input float cal_year_duration
1
2
5
15
3
4
2
7
8
1
end

[Øyvind Snilsberg]

you can use levelsof to cycle through the distinct values of cal_year_duration,

levelsof cal_year, local(levels)
foreach l of local levels {
gen Y`l'=.
}

[Eleni Moschou]

That worked, thank you!

[Pio Medolla]

Maybe this is what you looking for:

su cal_year_duration
local max_duration = r(max)

forvalues i = 1/`max_duration'{
    gen Y`i' = cal_year_duration if cal_year_duration == `i'
    }

[Nick Cox]

separate cal_year_duration, by(cal_year_duration)

does the loop for you.

Note that the forms allowed with forvalues are documented, and nothing else will work.