Use Autorecode. That is precisely what it is for.

AUTORECODE Variables=V1 to V1 / INTO N1 to N10.

or any other list of variables you have, into an equal nu8mber of new variables. It will done alphabetically so I don't know if numbers come first or last but they get recoded too. One of the handiest transformations SPSS has ever given us. Use it all the time.

If you are using windows I believe you will find AUTORECODE under "Transform", then follow the dialog box.

Cheers,

Necia A. Black, Ph.D. e-mail: black@buffalo.edu 246 Computing Center Web URL:http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~black SUNY-Buffalo Buffalo, New York 14260

On Fri, 5 Dec 2008, Joe Matise wrote:

> In the event that it is not as simple as A=1 etc. (in which case I very much > like karma's index solution), I see no reason why a select when statement > would not be precisely what you need. > > select (var1); > when ('A') var2=1; > when ('B') var2=2; > ... > otherwise var2 = .; > end; > > which has the advantage of working on character strings greater than one in > length. > > -Joe > > On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Scott Raynaud > <scott.raynaud@targetbase.com>wrote: > >> Say I have character variable VAR1 that takes on values A, B, C, etc. that >> I wish to recode into numeric VAR2 where A=1, B=2, C=3 and so on. Is >> there a more compact way of recoding this other than using a block of >> if/then statements? I can't use a format statement for this because I >> will be imputing values to missing data for this variable. >> >