st: right justifying strings, left padding strings with zeros

[Clare L Maxwell <maxwellcl1@earthlink.net>]

Hello to members of the Stata list.  Thank you in advance for having 
a look at this.

I have a six-column subject identifier coming into Stata from an 
ASCII file that looks like the following:

B    1
B  120
CCH  7
CCH 23
CCH213
UW  23
UW 232

I want to read in and manipulate these 6 columns so that in the end, 
I have a str6 variable that looks like this:

  B001
  B120
CCH007
CCH023
CCH213
 UW023
 UW232

That is, the first three columns have been right justified and the 
last three columns have been left-padded with zeros.  I have tried 
various options, but so far, not much luck.  I was considering 
reading them in as six str1 variables and putting things together 
sort of by brute force, but I thought I'd ask first.  Any suggestions 
on good string manipulations for this problem?

Thank you very much.

				Yours truly,
				Clare Maxwell




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