Using foreach loop for string variable

[Rogers Ssebunya]

Hello, I am new to looping and thought I could get some guidance here. I typed

foreach var of varlist uuid1 uuid2 uuid3 uuui4 {
    replace `var' = "ABC-ALB-ICE-011"/"ABC-ALB-ICE-017" if `var'=="ABC-ALB-ICE-0011"/"ABC-ALB-ICE-0017"
}

and I got this response

type mismatch

What am I missing? Thank you.

Rogers

[Joseph Coveney]

What am I missing?

What is it that you intend with the expression "ABC-ALB-ICE-011"/"ABC-ALB-ICE-017"? The solidus is an arithmetic operation, which cannot be performed on strings.

[Chen Samulsion]

foreach var of varlist uuid1 uuid2 uuid3 uuui4 {
    replace `var' = "ABC-ALB-ICE-011" if `var'=="ABC-ALB-ICE-0011"
    replace `var' = "ABC-ALB-ICE-017" if `var'=="ABC-ALB-ICE-0017"
}

or

foreach var of varlist uuid1 uuid2 uuid3 uuui4 {
    replace `var' = subinstr(`var',"0","",1)
}

[Nick Cox]

I am with Chen Samulsion and confirm that your problem is with the string expression fed to replace. Note that even if you intended | (logical OR) that operator requires numeric operands.

Being in a loop is not itself a problem with your code.

The function inlist() is worth knowing here, even if it is not needed.

[Rogers Ssebunya]

Thank you Chen for options they have been helpful & Nick thank you for the "inlist" command, am reading about it.