> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 4:30 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: problem referencing certain characters
>
>
> I am writing a program to clean up some data and I wish to
> delete certain
> characters from my data. I have been using the subinstr
> command with the
> following syntax:
> replace `var' = subinstr(`var',"(removed character)","",.);
> This works exactly as I intend, except for the double quotes
> character (")
> and the question mark (?). I referenced the stata manual and
> although the
> issue is addressed, their solution does not seem to work for
> me. They say
> to use the compound double quotes (`" "'). But doing so makes no
> difference for me. Stata still is unable to correctly read
> the following
> code:
> replace `var' = subinstr(`var',`"""',"",.);
> replace `var' = subinstr(`var',"?","",.);
> I have no idea why it wont work for the question mark either.
> If anyone has experienced similar problems or knows of a
> solution, please
> inform.
> Thank you,
> Kyle
I don't have any trouble with the quote characters:
. clear
. set obs 1
obs was 0, now 1
. gen str10 junk=`"abc"abc"'
. list
junk
1. abc"abc
. gen str20 j2=subinstr(junk,`"""',"",.)
. list
junk j2
1. abc"abc abcabc
.
The question marks, however, may not be working for you because stata
displays many unprintable characters as a question mark:
. replace junk=char(22)
(1 real changes made)
. list
junk j2
1. ? abcabc
. list if junk=="?"
junk j2
I don't know if the character mappings vary across OSs, but on my Wintel
machine, the various non-displayabel characters are numbered 1-32 and
127-255. So you could do this:
foreach var in [VARIALBE LIST] {
forval i=1/32 {
local x = char(`i')
quietly replace `var' = subinstr(`var',`"`x'"',"",.)
}
forval i=127/255 {
local x = char(`i')
quietly replace `var' = subinstr(`var',`"`x'"',"",.)
}
}
This would strip all the unprintable characters out, one-by-one.
--Nick Winter
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
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> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
* For searches and help try:
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