Encode and generate with different starting number than 1

[Kamran Khan Niazi]

Dear colleagues,

I am trying to encode and generate a list of 30 villages. I know encode and generate will convert the variable into numeric with value labels of village names in alphanumeric order.

I would like to keep that but I would like that the encode starts the numbering from 901 instead of 1. I don't want to manually add 900 onto the encoded variables because this will remove my value labels and I will have to manually add it.

Anyone knows how to change the starting number for encode, gen?

Thanks,

[Nick Cox]

You could do it the slow way of defining 901 to 930 as numeric identifiers and then value labels for those values.

This is a little more systematic. labmask is from the Stata Journal.

. clear 

. 
. set obs 26 
Number of observations (_N) was 0, now 26.

. 
. gen village_name = word("`c(ALPHA)'", _n)

. 
. list if inrange(_n, 1, 5) | inrange(_n, 22, 26)

     +----------+
     | villag~e |
     |----------|
  1. |        A |
  2. |        B |
  3. |        C |
  4. |        D |
  5. |        E |
     |----------|
 22. |        V |
 23. |        W |
 24. |        X |
 25. |        Y |
 26. |        Z |
     +----------+

. 
. * you start here with your own variable name 
. sort village_name 

. 
. gen village_id = 900 + sum(village_name != village_name[_n-1])

. 
. labmask village_id, values(village_name)

. 
. list if inlist(_n, 1, 5) | inlist(_n, 22, 26)

     +---------------------+
     | villag~e   villag~d |
     |---------------------|
  1. |        A          A |
  5. |        E          E |
 22. |        V          V |
 26. |        Z          Z |
     +---------------------+

. 
. list if inlist(_n, 1, 5) | inlist(_n, 22, 26), nolabel 

     +---------------------+
     | villag~e   villag~d |
     |---------------------|
  1. |        A        901 |
  5. |        E        905 |
 22. |        V        922 |
 26. |        Z        926 |
     +---------------------+

[daniel klein]

Here are two other canned approaches:

label define village_label, // <- define an empty value label
encodelabel village_string , generate(village_numeric) label(village_label) min(901)

or

encode village_string , generate(village_numeric)
elabel adjust : replace village_numeric = village_numeric + 900

Both encodelabel and elabel are from SSC.

[Kamran Khan Niazi]

Super stuff, daniel klein. Thank you.