Dear list,
I want to merge two files where the common variable is a string (names
of cities). However, there are non systematic differences in the notions.
For example, you can find: "Berlin" in the first file but " Berlin" in
the second. In other cases you can find "Rome" and "Roma,IT". Or "Paris,
FR" and "Paris/FR"
I was tot able to find any systematics in the notion. I have over 40.000
unique observations.
How can I search for substrings in Stata? For example, for "*Rom*", the
largest match between "Rome" and "Roma,IT".
I think this could help to solve some problems. Or does anybody know a
better way to deal with such kind of 'bad' data?
thanks
viktor
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