Stata is a case-sensitive application. Sometimes this will cause a trouble. So, we may want to change variable names or values of variables to all lowercase before we start processing data. This post gives a fast way to do this.
Change variable names to all lowercase
We need to use the command rename. Instead of renaming variables one at a time, we can rename all variables in a single command (thanks Steve):
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rename _all, lower |
Change values of string variables to all lowercase
ustrlower(string_variable) or strlower(string_variable) will do the trick. Instead of applying ustrlower or strlower function to string variables one by one, we can benefit from lowercasing values of all string variables in a short loop. The following loop will first check the type of a variable. If it is a string variable, then change the value of the variable to all lowercase.
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foreach var of varlist _all { local vartype: type `var' if substr("`vartype'",1,3)=="str" { replace `var'=ustrlower(`var') } } |
Is it the same with
rename _all, lower
Thanks for your input. I realize the original post is ambiguous. I have made an update to make it clearer.