Re: st: RE: reshape long does not recognize negative date values

["M. Douglas Berg" <eco_mdb@shsu.edu>]

Thank you!
I implemented your suggestions and they worked like a charm. I 
appreciate your help.

I also wish to thank Jean Ries for replying.

Doug Berg


Nick Cox wrote:


> You are putting the blame in the wrong place, 
> I think. 
> -insheet- tries hard to convert your "labels", meaning 
> not Stata labels, but column headers in your file, into variable 
> names, but "-" is not legal within variable names 
> and if it is stripped the problem then will be that 
> "p-1" and "p1" cannot be distinguished. So it seems
> that your variable names will get messed up well before 
> -reshape- ever sees them. The problem therefore 
> is the implicit assumption that -insheet- will break Stata's 
> rules to satisfy your preferences. 
> One work-around is this: 
> Your .csv file, it seems, has a first line something like this: 
> permid,p-2,p-1,p0,p1,p2 
> Change the "permid" to "id". 
> Change all the "-" signs to underscores "_". "_" is allowed 
> within variable names. You should be able to do this easily 
> in any text editor. 
> Now -insheet- as before. 
> . reshape long p, i(id) j(qtime) string 
> The change of name of -permid- to -id- stops -permid- 
> getting bundled in with variables whose names start 
> with -p-. The -string- option flags that the underscores 
> are OK, but time will be a string variable. 
> Now the underscores must be mapped back again: 
> replace qtime = subinstr(qtime,"_","-",1) 
> destring qtime, replace 
> and you should be nearer where you want to be. 
> Nick 
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 
> M. Douglas Berg
>
>  
>
> > I have a comma seperated (csv) file with quarterly data on 
> > variable p. 
> > The column headings are of the form  p0, p1, etc for 1960q1, 
> > 1960q2. For 
> > periods prior to 1960 I labelled the columns p-1, p-2, etc 
> > for 1959q4, 
> > 1959q3.
> > I use the command :
> >
> >    insheet using qp.csv
> >
> > to input the data into Stata.
> >
> > Then I  do the following:
> >    reshape long p,  i(permno) j(qtime)
> >    format qtime %tq
> >
> > Stata then creates variable v1, v2, v3, .... for all of the 
> > dates prior 
> > to 1960q1.
> >
> > How should I specify the dates in the csv file so that Stata 
> > picks them up correctly?
> >    
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>  

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