I sent this earlier today, but it didn't appear on the list. Let's try
again - sometimes my posts don't appear.
I converted an Excel spreadsheet using StatTransfer and all of the
variables came through as strings. I converted a date variable using
the command
gen daten=date(date,"MDY")
and about half of the dates came through just fine. However, some dates
did not convert:
----------------------|
131. | 10/10/1986 9779 |
132. | 03/21/1995 12863 |
133. | 09/26/1995 13052 |
134. | 04/03/1996 13242 |
135. | . |
|----------------------|
136. | 09/15/90 . |
137. | 03/15/91 . |
138. | 12/15/98 . |
139. | 07/15/86 . |
140. | 02/15/87 . |
|----------------------|
The left column is the string variable, the right column is the julian
date (I later convert to a date format, and the ones that do convert are
correct).
I thought the problem might be extra spaces, so I tried ltrim and rtrim
to get rid of them, but it didn't work.
I suspect others may have seen this problem - it's a pain in the neck to
do the conversion, but I did it manually.
Does anyone have an idea what might be happening?
Tony
Peter A. Lachenbruch
Department of Public Health
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97330
Phone: 541-737-3832
FAX: 541-737-4001
*
* 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/