Thanks everyone. Svend's suggestion worked fine. Sorry I was not clear
in my post.
Hugh
On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:47 PM, Sergiy Radyakin <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hugh,
>
> you have two variables date (which shows the date and has 00:00 as
> time) and time (which is always Jan1,1960 and proper time). Sorting
> first by this variable date, and then by variable time:
> sort date time
> will have the same effect as if you combined and reformatted the
> variables as others suggested.
>
> Regards, Sergiy
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Svend Juul <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hugh wrote:
>>
>> I have 3 variables; id, date, time.
>> "date" and "time" both have a storage type of str8 and are both in %9s
>> display format. I need to sort on "id", "date" and "time" in that
>> sequence.
>>
>> I am able to get "date" as float %td, but I am having a problem with
>> "time". I got "time" as a double %tc, but it obviously comes out with
>> the date "01jan1960" plus the time. I have over 2 million
>> observations. I am using Stata 10.
>>
>> ==========================================================
>>
>> To make the date and time sortable, combine the two strings into
>> one, and next transform the string into a numeric date-and time
>> (tc) variable. (It has the numeric value of the number of
>> milliseconds (!) since 1 January 1960):
>>
>> . clear
>> . set obs 1
>> . gen str sdate = "12112008"
>> . gen str stime = "19:10:00"
>> . gen sdatetime = sdate + " " + stime
>> . gen datetime = clock(sdatetime,"DMY hms")
>> . format datetime %tc
>> . list, clean
>> sdate stime sdatetime datetime
>> 1. 12112008 19:10:00 12112008 19:10:00 12nov2008 19:08:55
>>
>> Hope this helps
>> Svend
>>
>> ________________________________________________________
>>
>> Svend Juul
>> Institut for Folkesundhed, Afdeling for Epidemiologi
>> (Institute of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology)
>> Vennelyst Boulevard 6
>> DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
>> Phone, work: +45 8942 6090
>> Phone, home: +45 8693 7796
>> Fax: +45 8613 1580
>> E-mail: [email protected]
>> _________________________________________________________
>>
>> *
>> * For searches and help try:
>> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
>> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
>> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
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> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
--
Hugh
*
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