How to create a variable that is when the row value is equal to the column title

[yukine]

Hi all,

I have a dataset that looks something like this:

acc_num   year     int_2001  int_2002  int_2003 ....  

     A          2001       0.05          

     B         2002        0.03        0.04

     C         2003        0.01        0.03       0.04

Basically, I want to create a new variable interest that is equal to the interest of that year, so for example, for acc_num "C", I want to have the interest equal to 0.04 because I want to get the interest when year 2003 is the same as the last 4 numbers  of the column title "int_2003"

When can I write the program to do that? Thank you very much!

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

Create an array and assign an index that maps to the year 

array int_rate(2001:2003) int_2001 - int_2003;

interest_year = int_rate(year);