I am glad you are making progress, but if you have any "99"
for month and day, i.e. missing values encoded as such,
then -todate- has no way to work out the correct values.
So, your dates should still be missing in the same place.
It's just that -todate- doesn't squawk at you about them. At this point,
I am not sure that is a feature.
Nick
[email protected]
Michael McCulloch
> Thanks Nick; using -todate-, now the missing values are no
> longer generated.
>
> . todate datedx , gen(datedx2) pattern(yyyymmdd)
> . format datedx2 %d
>
> Out of curiosity, I looked back at my previous method, and
> found that there
> were day and month ==99.
>
> . summarize dx??1
> Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min
> Max
> -------------+--------------------------------------------------------
> dxyr1 | 26806 1990.195 1.958295 1987
> 1993
> dxmo1 | 26806 7.269828 9.244575 1
> 99
> dxda1 | 26806 17.66037 15.60529 1
> 99
>
> >summarize dx??1
> >
> >to see which of the days, months, years variables are
> >out of range.
> >
> >Anyway, why are you doing it this way? Only a few days ago
> >a thread you started thrashed out the fact that -todate- from SSC
> >should be able to do it in one line.
> >
> >todate datedx, pattern(yyyymmdd) format(%d) gen(datedx1)
> >Michael McCulloch
> >
> > > I've converted a string date (yyyymmdd) to Stata format, using:
> > >
> > > . * convert datedx to Stata format
> > > . tostring datedx, replace
> > > datedx was double now str8
> > > . generate str4 dxyr1= substr(datedx,1,4)
> > > . generate str2 dxmo1 = substr(datedx,5,6)
> > > . generate str2 dxda1 = substr(datedx,7,8)
> > > . destring dx*, replace
> > > dxyr1 has all characters numeric; replaced as int
> > > dxmo1 has all characters numeric; replaced as byte
> > > dxda1 has all characters numeric; replaced as byte
> > > . gen datedx1 = mdy(dxmo1, dxda1, dxyr1)
> > > (387 missing values generated)
> > > . format datedx1 %d
> > >
> > > However, search for missing values before & after my commands
> > > yields nothing:
> > > . list datedx if missing(datedx) in 1/10
> > >
> > > Where might the missing 387 values have originated?
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