st: dropping digits from variables in Stata 10

[Ekaterina Hertog <ekaterina.hertog@sociology.ox.ac.uk>]

Dear All,
I am rather new to Stata so I apologize in advance if these are rather 
silly questions, but I googled around extensively and searched Stata 
help and cannot find an adequate solution.
1) I have got a variable consisting of 7 digit zipcodes. I want to 
create a second variable which will only  consist of the first 3 digits 
of each zip-code and I cannot find a way to do it.
2) Some of the zipcodes start with 00, e.g 0037845 and Stata drops the 
front 00 turning such zipcodes into 5-digit numbers (e.g. 37845). I need 
to make Stata understand that these 00 are meaningful and return them 
back into the zipcodes and I cannot find how to do this. They were 
present in my original csv file, but when I converted it into a Stata 
file using Stattransfer they were gone.
I will be most grateful for any help or advice,
Sincerely yours,
Ekaterina

--
Ekaterina Hertog (née Korobtseva)
Career Development Fellow
Department of Sociology and Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies
University of Oxford

27 Winchester Road
Oxford
OX2 6NA
United Kingdom


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