To print the value of ill for the first sorted record, do this:

?ill[1]

@ only gets the current value of the variable, which will always be the first value of a field, but then analysis is somewhat confused by the [1]. @ is normally used with global variables

in your example @ill[1] *should* produce 4[1]

at least it does in my test.

Jamie

On Apr 14, 2017, at 18:02, EpiData development and support epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:

I am trying to retrieve value of variables based on other variables.

Example: a dataset with 3 observations: # region_code ill 1 21 4 2 30 10 3 40 6

i have tried the following:

sort region_code gen i s =_n @ill[1]

but i am getting the result of the last observation and not the first.

I will be thankful if you advise on how to retrieve the value of a variable based on record indexing.