Re: st: STATA cannot read a vlue of dataXY=.z_

[Steven Samuels <sjhsamuels@earthlink.net>]

Pascal, I should have noted that ".z" is a legal Stata missing  
value.  The problem is the  underscore "_".

I recommend that you read the variable as a string, as I suggested,  
then remove the "_" and convert to numeric with  -destring- :   
destring dataXY, ignore("_") replace

Then label the missing value:

label define rec_err  .z "Recording Error"
label values dataXY  rec_err

-destring- and -label values-  both can operate on a list of  
variables, so you can fix other variables with the ".z_" value at the  
same time.

-Steve

On Nov 25, 2008, sjhsamuels@earthlink.net wrote:
> Read the variable in as string, convert the ".z_" to whatever  
> missing value code you wish (not zero!);  "gen newvar =real 
> (oldvar)" to convert to numeric; and drop the original version.
>
> On Nov 25, 2008, at 1:29 PM, pstock@rumms.uni-mannheim.de wrote:
>
> > STATA cannot read a vlue of dataXY=.z_
> >
> > STATA cannot read some entries in a numeric variable with the value
> > .z_, which are recording errors in Compustat. Trying to convert them
> > to 0 was not possible as STATA somehow does not recognize these
> > entries.
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