Depending on your needs you could
(i) gen double temp = id
(ii) treat id as a string variable
You problem is most likely due to the limits of the computer in adequately
representing the number of digits. Usually an id serves no analytical
purpose and a string representation avoids these problems.
There are several FAQs on this topic available ( -findit precision-)
Phil
At 04:42 AM 8/08/2005 +0000, you wrote:
Dear Stata users,
I have a variable called id with 10 digits. I used "format id %15.0f" in
order to be able to see all the digits in Stata.
My question is the following:
When I do:
"gen temp=id
format temp %15.0f"
for some weird reason, the new variable "temp" comes out with numbers
different from the variable "id". But I want these two variables to be
exactly the same!
Do you know why this is happening and what is the solution for this problem?
Thanks for your help,
MA_V
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