Re: st: how to destring variables containing char " ' "

[Roger Newson <roger.newson@kcl.ac.uk>]

At 12:49 14/04/04 -0400, Shourun Guo wrote:
> I have a hard time to destring some variables with both characters and 
> numbers. The numbers are what I want. The characters may contain " ' ". If 
> I include this character in the option of ignore, I will get error message 
> of mismatch type. If  I don't, I will be reminded that the conversion 
> won't be done because some non-numeric character (I am sure it is the " ' 
> ")exists. It seems that the STATA confuses the double quotation and the 
> single quotation. Any suggestions.
> Yes. If your string variable is called -netty-, and you want your numeric 
> variable to be called -nutty-, then you can convert in 2 stages by 
> substituting another character for the "'" in -netty-. For instance, if 
> you type

gene natty=subinstr(netty,"'","@",.)
destring natty, ignore("@") gene(nutty)

then -natty- will be like -netty-, except that all the "'" characters will 
be replaced by "@" characters, and -nutty- will be the numeric variable 
that you wanted to create.

I hope this helps.

Roger


--
Roger Newson
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Department of Public Health Sciences
King's College London
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Opinions expressed are those of the author, not the institution.

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