Dear Phil and Peter:
Many thanks for your quick replies! I do want to facilitate the use of commands that require a numeric identifier.
Phil's method is very cool, and Peter's also teaches me a good lesson.
Ben
----------------------------------------
> From: [email protected]
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: st: Individual IDs with non-numeric characters
> Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2009 17:25:12 -0600
>
> On Feb 2, 2009, at 4:58 PM, Benson Limann wrote:
>> The individual IDs in my dataset are in the string format. I
>> currently use -destring- to make them numeric. But, unfortunately,
>> some individual IDs have non-numeric characters. As a result, -
>> destring- with the -force- option deletes all these individuals
>> automatically.
>>
>> Given that I want to sort all the observations, is it possible to
>> keep these individuals with non-numeric IDs?
>
>
> It's unclear what you're asking -- if some IDs have non-numeric
> characters that you want to preserve, then you have no choice but to
> leave the variable as a string. Why would you want to destring your
> ID variable anyway, given the headaches that a long numeric ID can
> cause (if not handled properly)? If the only reason is to facilitate
> the use of commands that require a numeric identifier (e.g., -xtset-),
> then this is easily addressed, e.g.:
>
> egen panel = group(id)
> xtset panel
>
>
> -- Phil
>
> *
> * 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/
_________________________________________________________________
Windows Live™ Hotmail®…more than just e-mail.
http://windowslive.com/howitworks?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t2_hm_justgotbetter_howitworks_012009
*
* 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/
