st: concatenate, leading zeros

[daphna <bassok@hoover.stanford.edu>]

Hello- I am pretty new to stata and would really appreciate some help with 
what seems like a pretty basic question.

I need to concatenate three variables into 1, and all three may have 
leading zeros.
Whenever I concatenate, the leading zero's are dropped.

To be clear...

If I have:

var1=01
var2=04956
var3=0906730

I would like to get a variable back that is: 01049560906730

This is not what I am getting: instead I am getting 14956906730.

I have formatted all my variables as string with the appropriate 
formats.  For instance, for my variable 1, I have done format var1 %02s.

They all look fine, and retain their leading zero's individually, but not 
once I concatenate.

Any thoughts?

I really appreciate your help with this.


=====================================================================

Daphna Bassok

Research Assistant
Center For Research On Education Outcomes
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

Phone: (650) 725-6169

=====================================================================

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