Renaming a single variable is pretty simple in Stata. Assume that we have the following variables in our data set.
date symbol returns
If we wish to rename the variable ‘ returns’ as ret , then the code will be as follows”
rename returns ret
We can rename many variables using the “rename group” features of the rename command. So, if we wish to rename all the three variables together, our code will be
rename (date symbol returns) (Date Symbol Returns)
In the above code, we just renamed date to Date, symbol to Symbol, and returns to Returns. From this example, we also learned that Stata’s variables are case sensitive. See the following table for more examples using parentheses.