Change letters into numeric with corresponding label

[Markos Valsamis]

I have a string variable called alphabet and it has observations A B C D E etc. I would like to convert these to 1 2 3 4 5 etc (each number representing the position of the letter in the alphabet) with a value label applied (A B C D E etc) so that I know which number represents which letter. Reason for doing so is because I want to include this variable as a categorical predictor in a model.

Many thanks in advance

[daniel klein]

Details are important. Do you really have the letters of the alphabet? What is the position of a letter in the alphabet going to predict?

Anyway, look at

help encode

and make sure to read the helpfile carefully before applying the command.

[Markos Valsamis]

Thanks, that works!