Clare,
Assuming your data is in a plain text file test.txt, try the following:
. insheet using test.txt
(1 var, 7 obs)
. list
+--------+
| v1 |
|--------|
1. | B 1 |
2. | B 120 |
3. | CCH 7 |
4. | CCH 23 |
5. | CCH213 |
|--------|
6. | UW 23 |
7. | UW 232 |
+--------+
. gen alpha=substr(v1,1,3)
. list alpha
+-------+
| alpha |
|-------|
1. | B |
2. | B |
3. | CCH |
4. | CCH |
5. | CCH |
|-------|
6. | UW |
7. | UW |
+-------+
. replace alpha=rtrim(alpha)
(4 real changes made)
. list alpha
+-------+
| alpha |
|-------|
1. | B |
2. | B |
3. | CCH |
4. | CCH |
5. | CCH |
|-------|
6. | UW |
7. | UW |
+-------+
. gen num=substr(v1,4,6)
. list num
+-----+
| num |
|-----|
1. | 1 |
2. | 120 |
3. | 7 |
4. | 23 |
5. | 213 |
|-----|
6. | 23 |
7. | 232 |
+-----+
. replace num=subinstr(num," ","0",.)
(4 real changes made)
. list num
+-----+
| num |
|-----|
1. | 001 |
2. | 120 |
3. | 007 |
4. | 023 |
5. | 213 |
|-----|
6. | 023 |
7. | 232 |
+-----+
. gen v2=alpha+num
. list v2
+--------+
| v2 |
|--------|
1. | B001 |
2. | B120 |
3. | CCH007 |
4. | CCH023 |
5. | CCH213 |
|--------|
6. | UW023 |
7. | UW232 |
+--------+
--
Kind regards,
Ian
-------------------------------
Ian Watson
Senior Researcher
acirrt, University of Sydney
NSW, 2006, Australia
phone: 02 9351 5622
email:[email protected]
www.acirrt.com
-------------------------------
Clare L Maxwell wrote:
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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