Create variables from a categorical variable

[Yousef Chavehpour]

I have a variable with many categories and want to create new variables for each one. Is there a way to not do it one by one?
Thank you

[Hemanshu Kumar]

There is a good chance you don't actually need this. Many commands like sum and estimation commands like regress, logit etc accept factor variable specifications that allow you to specify something like i.varname , and they will automatically generate the indicator variables needed on the fly. You might want to check

help fvvarlist

However, you can only use the i. operator on numerical variables, so if your current variable is string, you may want to first convert it to numeric using encode. See

help encode

If you do still want to create indicators, one option might be to use the generate() option to the tab command: see

help tabulate oneway