Label variables with what is in the first line

[Andrea Maier]

I wanna label each variable with the text in the first line of said variable.

My data looks like this

Varname1	Varname2
LabelVar1	LabelVar2
Value1Var1	Value1Var2
Value2Var1...	Value2Var2...

My current code seems not to work.

foreach var of varlist * {
label variable `var' ``var'[1]'
}

What would I do to fix this? I do not get any error messages.

[Nick Cox]

The line needs to be

label variable `var' "`=`var'[1]'"

after which you need to

drop in 1
destring, replace

Sometimes it's easier to go back and read the data in all over again.

The reason your code didn't work as you wished but there was no error message is fairly subtle. Here is my guess: Stata thinks that you are trying ``var'' and ignores [1] as trailing garbage. So, you are referring to a local macro that does not exist, which is allowed, and the result is an empty string, which here isn't fatal as you are just removing any variable label that happens to exist, and if there isn't one, that is fine with Stata too.

[Andrea Maier]

Thank you!