Creating a new string scalar variable by appending to it

[Shreya Dutt]

Hi,

I have a list of city names stored in a local macro. I want to create a string that looks like cityname1_cityname2_cityname3 (for 3 names) and store it as a new variable so I can call it it to the global defining my directory from where I get the data.

So as an example, if I have 3 cities defined as "nyc", "manila", "bogota", I have a directory which looks like "$(local_path)/nyc_manila_paris/nyc_manila_paris.csv". Now this city string is arbitrary based on whatever city names I use. So I want to generate a variable "nyc_manila_paris" that I can then reference to create the path variable. How do I do this? I have written some preliminary code below but it does not seem to be working. I have also put the python code below that I would write to create this variable.

*Stata
scalar citystring = ""
local cityname "nyc" "manila" "paris" "bogota"
foreach v of local cityname{
    replace citystring = citystring + "_" + `"`v'"'
}

global datadir "${local_path}/<reference to scalar variable citystring>/<reference to scalar variable citystring>.csv"

#Python code that I want to replicate in Stata

cityname = ["nyc", "manila", "paris"]
citystring = cityname[0]
for c in cityname[1:]:
     citystring = citystring + "_" + c

local_path = "<insert string for local dir>"
path = local_path+citystring+"/"

[William Lisowski]

Perhaps this will start you on a more effective path, rather than trying to translate Python code into very un-Stata-like Stata code.

. global local_path /whatever 

. local cityname "nyc manila paris bogota"

. local citystring : subinstr local cityname " " "_", all

. global datadir "${local_path}/`citystring'/`citystring'.csv"

. display "${datadir}"
/whatever/nyc_manila_paris_bogota/nyc_manila_paris_bogota.csv