st: Re: Recast string to numeric?

["Michael Blasnik" <michael.blasnik@verizon.net>]

-destring-

check out the ignore option to ignore the --

Michael Blasnik
michael.blasnik@verizon.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terra Curtis" <terra.curtis@cambridgefinance.com>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Monday, October 17, 2005 6:01 PM
Subject: st: Recast string to numeric?



> Dear Statlisters,
>
> I have used a program called Stat Transfer to transfer a dataset I had 
> saved
> in Excel into a Stata .dta file.  The missing values in Excel were 
> recorded
> as "--" so Stata recognizes those variables as strings.  I would like 
> Stata
> to recognize them as values; any datapoint not equal "--" is a number. 
> I've
> tried -recast- but I don't think this is what I want.  How can I change 
> the
> variable to be a number instead of a string?
>
> Thanks much,
> Terra
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