Looping over an alpha list?

[caburdick]

How can I determine the length of an alpha series so that I can loop over it's elements.

I have a list of states and would like to loop over the list:

alpha mystates
alpha(1) = "ny"
alpha(2) = "tx"

for !i = 1 to length(mystates)
%state = mystate(!i)
Do state specific stuff
next !i

How do I determine length(mystates)?

[EViews Gareth]

Well an alpha is the length of the workfile, so you can use one of the @obs type functions to get that information.



It strikes me that you may be using an alpha series for something that a table might be more suited for. If you're looking for somewhere to store strings, a table is probably better than an alpha.