Re: st: Count Special Character

[Fred Wolfe <fwolfe@arthritis-research.org>]

As usual, in Stata there are a number of different ways to do this. Here is 
a quick (and dirty) way to do it.

 set obs 1
obs was 0, now 1

. gen names = "smith/jones/la bush"

. gen b = subinstr(names," ","_",.)

. l names

     +---------------------+
     |               names |
     |---------------------|
  1. | smith/jones/la bush |
     +---------------------+

. l b

     +---------------------+
     |                   b |
     |---------------------|
  1. | smith/jones/la_bush |
     +---------------------+

. replace b = subinstr(b,"/"," ",.)
(1 real change made)

. l names b

     +-------------------------------------------+
     |               names                     b |
     |-------------------------------------------|
  1. | smith/jones/la bush   smith jones la_bush |
     +-------------------------------------------+

. gen wcount = wordcount(b)

. l names b wcount

     +----------------------------------------------------+
     |               names                     b   wcount |
     |----------------------------------------------------|
  1. | smith/jones/la bush   smith jones la_bush        3 |
     +----------------------------------------------------+

drop b

Fred Wolfe


At 03:03 PM 2/26/2005, you wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would appreciate some help on the following problem.
>
> I have a variable that captures individual names in my dataset. If there
> is more than 1 individual, then the names are separated by a /. For
> instance, there are 2 individuals if the variable shows
> riedel/baysinger, while there are 3 individuals if the variable shows
> riedel/baysinger/hitt.
>
> I need to create a new variable that captures the number of individuals
> for an observation. Does STATA allow me to count the number of / in a
> variable? In the above example, 1 / would indicate 2 individuals for
> that observation, while 2 / will indicate 3 individuals, and so on. I
> could count the number of / manually, but I have close to 20,000
> observations in the dataset!!
>
> Eugene Kang
>
>
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/

Fred Wolfe
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases
Wichita, Kansas
Tel (316) 263-2125     Fax (316) 263-0761
fwolfe@arthritis-research.org


*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/