I want to do certain actions on groups of variables. Each group has a specific index in the name. I don't want to repeat the syntax for each group. Is there a way to dynamically reference the variable names?
Below is the syntax. The 207 is the index that changes for each group of variables.
DO REPEAT aa= M9_207_1 to M9_207_99.
.....
END REPEAT.
EXECUTE.
You can use a macro to do this.
first define the macro:
define !MyMacro ()
!do !ndx=201 !to 207
DO REPEAT aa= !concat("M9_",!ndx,"_1") to !concat("M9_",!ndx,"_99").
.....
END REPEAT.
EXECUTE.
!doend
!enddefine.
then call it:
!MyMacro.
The macro defined here will run through indexes 201, 202, 203, etc'. If you need a more specific list of indexes, you can define the macro this way:
define !MyMacro (!pos=!cmdend)
!do !ndx !in(!1)
DO REPEAT aa= !concat("M9_",!ndx,"_1") to !concat("M9_",!ndx,"_99").
.....
END REPEAT.
EXECUTE.
!doend
!enddefine.
and then call it, giving the indexes (you have go specify each index individually):
!MyMacro 207 311 501 502 503 504 785.
!ind and !ndx - I now corrected the code, should run better!concat("Q1_",!ind,"1") (c) you can't use freq within a do repeat loop.It sounds like you could do some loop operation. I saw this kind of problem in R very often. I think the same idea would work in SPSS as well. Usually, I would try this:
for i in (1:207) {
for j in (1:99) {
M9[i,j] = ...
certain actions...
}
}
Hope this helps.
