How to recode a trinary variable into a binary

[Arthur Pandart]

Hello. I'm new to Stata, and I have a quick question.
I have a variable "size" in my data base :
1 if small
2 if medium
3 if large

I am looking to recode it into a binary variable of category 0 to 1 (1 being small and 0 being medium-large). I also have to rename the tags so that in my database, the variable displays "small" and "medium-large", rather than 1 and 0. I'd rather do that in one line (but if it is more, it's not a big issue). How can I do ?

Thank you for your help.

[Rich Goldstein]

try the following:

gen byte newvar=size==1

if there are missing values in "size" you will need to add:

replace newvar=. if size==.

the above assumes that size is numeric - please read the FAQ on how to ask questions and how to show your data

[Nick Cox]

One line is certainly possible.

gen byte wanted = cond(size == 1, 1, cond(size == 2 | size == 3, 0, .))

or see

help recode