Replace variable value with another variable's name

[Joan Marti]

Hi,

My dataset is of the form:

XVAR	Spain	France	UK	Germany	relevant_country
1	1	.	.	.	Spain
3	.	3	.	.	France
5	.	.	5	.	UK
7	.	.	.	7	Germany

Except that I do not have the variable relevant_country, which I am trying to create. This variable should taked the value of "Spain" if XVAR's value comes from the variable Spain, and the same for the other countries.

I have tried to do the following:

global countries Spain France UK Germany

gen relevant_country=.

foreach cntry in $countries{

global outcome "cntry'"

replace relevant_country=$outcome if country!=.

}

However, instead of the variable containing the country names, it contains the country values (so is identical to XVAR). How can I tell Stata to take the variable name instead of the variable value?

Thank you very much!

[Nick Cox]

clear 
input XVAR    Spain    France    UK    Germany    str42 relevant_country
1    1    .    .    .    "Spain"
3    .    3    .    .    "France"
5    .    .    5    .    "UK"
7    .    .    .    7    "Germany"
end 

gen wanted = "" 

foreach c of varlist Spain-Germany { 
    replace wanted = "`c'" if `c' < .     
}

list

No need for any globals.

[Joan Marti]

This works, thanks a lot!