Re: st: importing changes variable to numeric but want string variable

[Richard Goldstein <richgold@ix.netcom.com>]

First, you don't tell us how you imported the file -- if you used 
-infile- you can tell Stata that the variable should be a string; if you 
used a third party program (e.g., StatTransfer) you can also tell the 
program that you want a particular variable to be a string

Second, you can always make this into a string variable (use -tostring- 
for example) and then pad with leading 0's (e.g., -replace var="00000" 
if length(var)==1)

Rich

Ms. Marilyn Ibarra wrote:

> I have a text file with data that looks like this:
>
> us_id    firm_name
> 000007    x
> 012231    y
> 100210    z
> 345211    w
>
> I imported the txt file.  When I do this I get data that looks like this:
>
> us_id    firm_name
> 7         x
> 12231       y
> 100210    z
> 345211    w
>
> As you can see the zeros at the beginning of the first two observations of us_id are dropped.  How do I prevent this from happening because I need it in the format of the original txt file.  I need it to be a string variable and not numeric.  
> Any ideas?  Thanks in advance,
>
> Marilyn.   
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