Erica Seiguer wrote:
>I have a date variable which lists dates as
>
>MM-DD-YR
>
>I want to remove the hyphens/dashes, but can't find anything in any
>manual about this.
>
>Also, sometimes the actual time is also included like:
>
>MM-DD-YR HH:MM.
>
>In this case, I want to dump the time stamp, and keep the date (without
>the hyphens).
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As you describe the examples, the date variable and date-time variable would
be strings, so you can use Stata's string functions (-help functions-
or -help strfun-) to remove unwanted characters and to keep a specified
number of characters within the string.
Assuming that there aren't any typographical errors in the following, for
the first case (MM-DD-YR), for a date variable named dashed_date, the
command would be -generate str6 dedashed_date = subinstr(dashed_date,
"-","", .)-, and for the second case (MM-DD-YR HH:MM), either -generate
str6 dedashed_detimed_datetime = substr(subinstr(dashed_datetime, "-", "",
.), 1, 6)- or -generate str6 dedashed_detimed_datetime =
subinstr(substr(dashed_datetime, 1, 8), "-", "", .)-.
You might also be interested in -help dates- and what is referenced there.
Joseph Coveney
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