[Joseph Coveney]

I don't like these numeric values. They always confound me. . . . All I need is to create a dummy variable=1 when pais is PT..

I empathize. And I have good news: you can refer to the string value via its encoded value label. The expression uses the following syntax.

"value_label":label_name

I illustrate its use below (see the "// <= this" in-line comment) using your dataset and the task that you want to accomplish.

.ÿ
.ÿclearÿ*

.ÿ
.ÿquietlyÿinputÿstr2ÿPAIS

.ÿ
.ÿencodeÿPAIS,ÿgenerate(pais)ÿlabel(Países)

.ÿ
.ÿgenerateÿbyteÿis_ptÿ=ÿpaisÿ==ÿ"PT":Paísesÿ//ÿ<=ÿthis

.ÿ
.ÿtabulateÿis_pt,ÿmissing

ÿÿÿÿÿÿis_ptÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿFreq.ÿÿÿÿÿPercentÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿCum.
------------+-----------------------------------
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ0ÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ69ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ98.57ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ98.57
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ1ÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ1ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ1.43ÿÿÿÿÿÿ100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
ÿÿÿÿÿÿTotalÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ70ÿÿÿÿÿÿ100.00

.ÿ
.ÿlistÿifÿis_pt,ÿnoobs

ÿÿ+---------------------+
ÿÿ|ÿPAISÿÿÿpaisÿÿÿis_ptÿ|
ÿÿ|---------------------|
ÿÿ|ÿÿÿPTÿÿÿÿÿPTÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ1ÿ|
ÿÿ+---------------------+

.ÿ
.ÿexit

endÿofÿdo-file


.

I wish that this trick were more prominently documented. It's very handy and I've used it a lot over the years.

[Paris Rira]

It is amazing. Really appreciated. You can't imagine how much time I used to spend working on this matter. Always I was thinking what if there was a code to do it once instead of wasting some hours on changing labels to the original ones one by one. You saved my day.

[Clyde Schechter]

In response to #11:

g foreign_aff= 0
replace foreign_aff=1 if PAIS=="PT"
replace foreign_aff=0 if PAIS~="PT"

can be reduced to

gen foreign_aff = PAIS == "PT"

[George Ford]

g PT = PAIS=="PT"

[Rich Goldstein]

while I also use the logic used in #'s 16 and 17, note one caveat - if you have any missing values in your original variable (here "PAIS"), you will need to add a line so that you have missing values in your new variable (unless, of course, you want those missing values in the original variable translated to a 0 in the new variable); if you want missing values for the same observations in the new variable, try

replace PT=. if missing(PAIS)

[Clyde Schechter]

Or, to keep it a single line:

gen PT = (PAIS == "PT") if !missing(PAIS)