Hello all,
I'm using Stata 10 (last updated 10/10/07) and am having a bit of trouble with the -regexr- function. I can't tell if I've stumbled on a bug or if I'm doing something wrong.
I am trying to use -regexr- to transform a string variable called lfpatfin. I'd like to take every observation where the last letter in lfpatfin is "U" and substitute an "E" for the "U". The code appears to work except that two observations where lfpatfin was missing have been replaced with an "E". This appears to be similar to a problem Yun Liu had with -regexm- on July 16 in this thread: http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2008-07/msg00596.html, but I can't tell if Yun's issue was ever resolved. I have been unable to reproduce the problem using the auto dataset or a dataset generic dataset I created. My code and some output follows. I did nothing to test in between generating it and the -list- command.
gen test = regexr(lfpatfin,"U$", "E")
list lfpatfin test in 1/1000 if lfpatfin != test
+-----------------+
| lfpatfin test |
|-----------------|
70. | FRU FRE |
105. | RFU RFE |
148. | U E |
161. | U E |
554. | FU FE |
|-----------------|
861. | FU FE |
914. | U E |
+-----------------+
list lfpatfin test if missing(lfpatfin) & !missing(test)
+-----------------+
| lfpatfin test |
|-----------------|
20074. | E |
24067. | E |
+-----------------+
. list lfpatfin test in 16000/16200 if missing(lfpatfin)
+-----------------+
| lfpatfin test |
|-----------------|
16156. | |
16162. | |
16166. | |
16170. | |
16175. | |
|-----------------|
16176. | |
16179. | |
16180. | |
16183. | |
16186. | |
|-----------------|
16197. | |
+-----------------+
For what it's worth, I try to make similar changes to lfpatfin (substituting "B"s for final "D"s) later in my code and had the same problem.
I'd appreciate it a lot if anyone has any explanation. I also do not know how to see what Stata has updated since my last update, but I would be grateful if anyone knows where to go for that - I'd like to check whether the -regex- functions have been changed. Unfortunately, I don't have the admin rights to update my version of Stata.
Thanks for your consideration.
Howie
Howie Lempel
Research Assistant
The Brookings Institution | Economic Studies
1775 Massachusetts Ave NW | Washington DC 20036
[email protected] | p: (202) 238-3576
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