Automatic labelling of newly created indicator variables in Stata - stata

Question

I have a variable called region, which has 22 elements. Here is the output of tabulate region:
region of place of work | Freq. Percent Cum.
---------------------------+-----------------------------------
tyne & wear | 6 1.20 1.20
rest of northern region | 12 2.40 3.60
south yorkshire | 9 1.80 5.40
west yorkshire | 23 4.60 10.00
rest of yorks & humberside | 9 1.80 11.80
east midlands | 42 8.40 20.20
east anglia | 12 2.40 22.60
central london | 41 8.20 30.80
inner london (not central) | 23 4.60 35.40
outer london | 19 3.80 39.20
rest of south east | 97 19.40 58.60
south west | 46 9.20 67.80
west midlands metropolitan | 29 5.80 73.60
rest of west midlands | 14 2.80 76.40
greater manchester | 15 3.00 79.40
merseyside | 2 0.40 79.80
rest of north west | 31 6.20 86.00
wales | 12 2.40 88.40
strathclyde | 23 4.60 93.00
rest of scotland | 27 5.40 98.40
northern ireland | 8 1.60 100.00
---------------------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 500 100.00
I have created indicator variables from it using tab region, gen(region_). This creates 22 new variables, from region_1 to region_22. I do want the indicator variables to have simple names like region_1, etc (e.g. they are more easy to call using region_*). The problem is the label of the variable, which is something like region==south west. I want it to be south west.
I have looked at dummieslab (SSC) but it focuses on adding labels to the new variable names. None of these solutions work either. Do you know an automatic way to obtain this? Even a simple function like eliminating specific words from labels (getting rid of the region== bit) would work. I can't find anything like it.

Answer 1

Loop over the variables and zap unwanted text from the label each time. This basic functionality is documented at help macro and in the corresponding manual entry.
foreach v of var region_* {
local lbl : var label `v'
local lbl : subinstr local lbl "region==" "", all
local lbl = trim("`lbl'")
label var `v' "`lbl'"
}
For a canned solution, see labvarch from labutil on SSC, which you can install with
ssc inst labutil