Re: st: date format

[jean ries <ries@ires.ucl.ac.be>]

Hans J. Baumgartner wrote:

> Dear statalist,
>
> I have got one variable in my data that comes in format “YYYYMM”, i.e. 
> the first four digits correspond to the year and the last two to the 
> month.
>
> How can I translate this format into Stata elapsed date %d (see [U] 27)?

Try out -nsplit- which is available from SSC. With -nsplit- you could do:

. nsplit olddate, digits(4 2)
. gen dd = 1
. gen newdate = mdy(olddate2,dd,olddate1)
. format newdate %d_m_Y

Without -nsplit-, you could do:

. gen yy = floor(olddate/100)
. gen mm = mod(olddate,100)
. gen dd = 1
. gen newdate = mdy(mm,dd,yy)
. format newdate %d_m_Y

Of course, you might pick another value for the day, as suggested by 
Joseph Coveney.


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