st: Suggestion concerning merge

[Fred Wolfe <fwolfe@arthritis-research.org>]

Stata allows -merge- with the options - update- and -update replace-. 
Stata indicates that "A nonmissing value, however, will never be 
replaced with a missing value." Perhaps it might be allowed for that 
to occur. The option might be called -allreplace-.

I am working with a dataset in which I found "strange" values for one 
variable. The persons who created the dataset examined the variable 
and made corrections. However, some corrections were to missing. 
-merge- does not allow me to replace values with missing, although 
that is the correct thing to do in this circumstance. So, perhaps 
Stata might consider this new option.

Thanks. BTW, no need to suggest work arounds I know how to do that.

Fred






Fred Wolfe
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases
Wichita, Kansas
Tel +1 316 263 2125
fwolfe@arthritis-research.org

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