Thanks to Kit Baum, the program -todate- on SSC
has been updated. It now requires Stata 8.
-todate- is a tool for conversion of run-together
dates (e.g. those of the form 19601125) to date
variables recognisable to Stata. StataCorp's
advice is to do-it-yourself with run-together dates
using functions to extract (e.g.) year, month and day
information and then recombine the parts as appropriate.
-todate- is a wrapper for such surgical, or rather
mechanical, operations.
The changes in this version are principally that
1. Default formats are assigned whenever the
user does not specify the -format()- option.
2. Any variable labels are copied from the
original variables.
3. The help file makes it clearer what happens
when dates are not daily dates.
4. The help has been SMCLed.
As said, -todate- now requires Stata 8. Tthe
previous version, which required Stata 7, remains
available as -todate7- but is otherwise frozen
as was (that is, none of the enhancements above
have been made). My policy as program author is
not to take away previously available functioning
versions, but to develop only the latest version
publicly available.
A question from David Kantor led directly to
some of these changes.
Nick
[email protected]
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