Find and Replace Feature in Do Files

[Corlia Zekveld]

Dear All,

Is there a way where the find & replace function can be made to be case-sensitive?

E.g. searching for "dia" (variable name in a repeated measures analysis) so that it would flag dia0, dia1, dia2, etc.

But then "Diastolic" (as used in graph titles) is also highlighted and if I press on "replace all" it would change the first part of that word, whereas I would like for it to be left as is.

Hope this is clear.

I use Stata 18 for Mac.

Thanks

[Andrew Musau]

A do-file is simply a text file. So you may import it using import delimited and use standard string functions to edit it.

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str200 command
"summarize Diastolic"              
"regress dia44 var1 var2 var3 dia7"
"mean diabetes"                    
"drop dia2"                        
"*list of diagnostics"            
"keep dia5 var4 var5"              
"*find matches of DIAPHRAGM"      
end

*REPLACE dia? (CASE-SENSITIVE) WITH "sys?"
gen wanted= trim(itrim(ustrregexra(" " +command+ " ","\bdia(\d+)\b", "sys$1")))

Res.:

l, sep(0)

     +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |                           command                              wanted |
     |-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
  1. |               summarize Diastolic                 summarize Diastolic |
  2. | regress dia44 var1 var2 var3 dia7   regress sys44 var1 var2 var3 sys7 |
  3. |                     mean diabetes                       mean diabetes |
  4. |                         drop dia2                           drop sys2 |
  5. |              *list of diagnostics                *list of diagnostics |
  6. |               keep dia5 var4 var5                 keep sys5 var4 var5 |
  7. |        *find matches of DIAPHRAGM          *find matches of DIAPHRAGM |
     +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

.

So you want something like:

import delimited mydofile.do
egen command= concat(v*)
replace command= trim(itrim(ustrregexra(" " +command+ " ","\bdia(\d+)\b", "sys$1")))
contract command, nomiss
list, sep(0)

[Leonardo Guizzetti]

From the do-file editor, if you to Edit > Find > Replace, you will see an option to "match case" which means the search will be case-sensitive.

[Corlia Zekveld]

Dear Andrew and Leonardo,

Thank you both for your replies. This will help tremendously.
Much appreciated