st: Hello all in statland

[Jon Ebeling <jebeling@rocko.lab.csuchico.edu>]

Can anyone help me with this problem. I'm trying to convert an alpha 
character to numbers in a stata data base that I have. here is an example.


> . tab qes5
>
> do you have    
> any fears    
> riding at    
> night? 1.    
> yes 2. no    
> 8. no    
> answer    Freq.    Percent    Cum.
>             
> na    26    24.76    24.76
> na    78    74.29    99.05
> 8        1    0.95    100.00
>             
> Total    105    100.00
Notice that I want to replace na with number that are appropriate. I 
have used "real" before but when I try to use it now, it comes back with 
an error message.

Here is what I"ve used:



. gen qes5r = real(qes5)
type mismatch
r(109);


I know that the underlying numbers associated with these na's is correct 
but I can't get them to be listed in the stata output.


. sum qes5

   Variable |       Obs        Mean    Std. Dev.       Min        Max
-------------+--------------------------------------------------------
       qes5 |       105    1.809524    .7480132          1          8



Thanks in advance for any help here.

jon ebeling



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