Generate a variable that counts if

[Rita Neves]

Hi all,

my dataset looks something like this

newid time_1 time_2 time_3 time_4 time_5 time_6 time_7 time_8 time_9 time_10 time_11
160100011 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 5 0

I want to generate a variable that counts any values different from 0 for all of my time_variables. In this case, I would end with a variable_count = 2

I tried this bite of code (and several others)

gen time_count=0
foreach v of var time_* {
replace time_count=count  if `v'!=0 
}

But off course it says "count not found" r(111)

Does anyone have any ideas on how to do this?
Thank you!

[Sarah Edgington]

This should get you what you want.

gen time_count=0
foreach v of var time_* {
    replace time_count=time_count +1 if `v'!=0  
}

[Sven-Kristjan Bormann]

Another shorter approach works the rcount function by the user-provided egenmore package.

ssc install egenmore // In case you have not already installed it.
egen time_count = rcount(time_*), cond(@>0)

[Rita Neves]

Thanks a lot Sarah and Sven-Kristjan!
It worked out great and I got that egenmore installed.