Speaking Stata: Loops, again and again

Cox, Nicholas J.

doi:10.1177/1536867x20976340

Speaking Stata: Loops, again and again

Cox, Nicholas J.

Authors

Dr Nicholas Cox n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
Assistant Professor

Abstract

Two commands in official Stata, foreach and forvalues, provide structures for looping through lists of values (variable names, numbers, arbitrary text) and repeating commands using members of those lists in turn. These commands may be used interactively, and none is restricted to use in Stata programs. They are explained and compared in some detail with a variety of examples. In addition, a self-contained exposition is given on local macros, understanding of which is needed for use of foreach and forvalues. This column is a revision of the column “How to face lists with fortitude”, which appeared in Stata Journal 2: 202–222 (2002). (The bizarre bibliographical details are too, too extraordinary not to be flagged but were pure happenstance.) The presentation here has been trimmed of now historic content and corrected, improved, and updated in several minor details.

Citation

Cox, N. J. (2020). Speaking Stata: Loops, again and again. The Stata Journal, 20(4), https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x20976340

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Dec 22, 2020
Publication Date	2020
Deposit Date	Sep 22, 2021
Publicly Available Date	Sep 22, 2021
Journal	The Stata Journal: Promoting communications on statistics and Stata
Print ISSN	1536-867X
Electronic ISSN	1536-8734
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	20
Issue	4
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/1536867x20976340

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