Try some variation on
. infile a b str80 c d e using my.csv
where the "str80" must precede the variable
name and where "80" can be replaced by the
largest number of digits.
Nick
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> Rebecca Kalmus
> Sent: 20 May 2004 16:13
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: RE: RE: RE: inputting string variables in comma-separated
> files
>
>
> That's helpful, thanks. However, that only works if the
> variable has the
> same number of digits for all observations. Suppose one
> observation is
> 001 and another is 0001, both of which are read into Stata as
> 1, and no
> observation has more than four digits for this variable. In that case
> tostring will turn this variable into 0001 for both these
> observations.
>
> Rebecca Kalmus
>
> *********************************************************************
>
> I think what Nick was trying to get at is that you can
> recreate your lost
> leading zeroes by using the -format()- option in -tostring-
> as illustrated
> below.
> Joseph Coveney
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> . clear
> . set obs 5
> obs was 0, now 5
> . generate int x = 10^(_n - 1) // <- original comma-separated values
> . tostring x, generate(sx) format(%05.0f) // note the format--leading
> zeroes
> sx generated as str5
> . clist, noobs
> x sx
> 1 00001
> 10 00010
> 100 00100
> 1000 01000
> 10000 10000
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> From: Rebecca Kalmus wrote:
> Once I've read the comma-separated file into Stata, Stata has
> already read
> the variable as numeric. The leading zeros are already gone, so
> converting the variable to string using tostring doesn't help.
> In the past I've gotten around this problem by converting the
> comma-separated file to Stata format using Stat/transfer,
> with which I can
> specify that the variable should be read as string. However, it seems
> like there should be a more straightforward solution.
> Rebecca Kalmus
> > >From "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
> > To <[email protected]>
> > Subject st: RE: inputting string variables in
> comma-separated files
> > Date Tue, 18 May 2004 19:46:19 +0100
> >
> > A good bet in this circumstance is to make
> > it a string variable again using -tostring-.
> > Make sure you specify a format which produces
> > leading zeros.
> >
> > Nick
> > [email protected]
> >
> *
> * For searches and help try:
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> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
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