How to sort string variable in the order I generated it in the code?

Question

I have generated a string variable in the following way:

gen Category = "none"
replace Category = "Pineapple" if d == 400 | d == 800
replace Category = "Mango" if d == 300 | d == 700
replace Category = "Apple" if d == 200 | d == 600
replace Category = "Orange" if d == 100 | d == 500

sort Category 
by Category, sort: egen Total_volume = sum(volume)

sort  Category
quietly by  Category:  gen dup = cond(_N==1,0,_n)
drop if dup>1
drop dup

in the end, I hope to have a output that is sorted by Category, and appear in the order:

>     Category    Total_volume
>     Pineapple   2929
>     Mango    5454
>     Apple   1020
>     Orange   5055

However, through running the code, some of the observations were dropped so to obtain a single line for a sum of the total volume, what I so far got was in an alphabetical order.

>     Category    Total_volume
>     Apple   1020
>     Mango    5454
>     Orange   5055
>     Pineapple   2929

How could I adjust so that the output shows in the order I arranged in the current code?

Please study stackoverflow.com/help/mcve For example, the definition of d is irrelevant to this question. datex from SSC (in Stata, type ssc inst dataex) is a way of generating self-contained data examples. — Nick Cox
– Nick Cox, Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:19
Not the question but the repeated sorts are not needed here. — Nick Cox
– Nick Cox, Commented Apr 25, 2016 at 14:19

Nick Cox · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-25 14:17:11Z

2

A string variable when sorted is necessarily in alphabetic order, or more generally the order given by the string characters used. If you map to a numeric variable, you can use value label definitions to insist on a different order. See the help for encode and label.

label def Category 1 "Pineapple" 2 "Mango" 3 "Apple" 4 "Orange" 
encode Category, gen(Numeric) label(Category)
sort Numeric

answered Apr 25, 2016 at 14:17

Nick Cox

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