Using regular expressions to recode string variable

[Laura Andrews]

Hello Statalist,

I am recoding text responses to a survey question and I would like to tell Stata to recode answers starting with "Demi" to a particular category. I am not sure how to do this with string variables. I have successfully done this before with string variables using a command like this "destring v*, force replace", but do not know how to do this with the contents of the variable.

Below is an example of the piece of code I am struggling with:

replace gendercatx=5 if dem_genderid_6_TEXT=="Genderfluid" | dem_genderid_6_TEXT=="Demi+" | dem_genderid_6_TEXT=="genderfluid"

I am also curious if there is an easy way to tell Stata to ignore capitalization? For example, I have responses such as "Agender" and "agender" that I want to recode to the same category.

Thanks,
Laura

[Nick Cox]

 
 replace gendercatx=5 if inlist(lower(dem_genderid_6_TEXT), "genderfluid", "demi+", "agender")

Warning: no more than 10 distinct strings as arguments in a single inlist() call.

[Laura Andrews]

Thank you Nick! Will this code include the capitalized version of these terms, such as "Demi+", "Agender", etc?

[Nick Cox]

Should do. Did you try it? Sometimes the best way to test code is to create a small sandbox dataset encapsulating the main problem,