st: Re: How to turn my date variable into a variable Stata.10 can recognise?

["jmpsouza" <jmpsouza@usp.br>]

dear Ekaterina:
try -todate-, available from -ssc install todate-.
todate olddate,gen(newdate) pattern(yyyymmdd)
In your case olddate= 19560413; newdate= 13apr1956

Jose Maria Pacheco de Souza, Professor Titular (aposentado)
Departamento de Epidemiologia/Faculdade de Saude Publica, USP
Av. Dr. Arnaldo, 715
01246-904  -  S. Paulo/SP - Brasil
fones (11)3061-7747; (11)3768-8612
fax (11)3714-2403
www.fsp.usp.br/~jmpsouza
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ekaterina Hertog" <ekaterina.hertog@sociology.ox.ac.uk>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 5:13 PM
Subject: st: How to turn my date variable into a variable Stata.10 can 
recognise?


> Dear All,
> I have got a dataset which contain dates of birth for individuals and 
> these dates of birth look as follows: 19560413 and I am trying to turn 
> them into date variables Stata can recognise.
> It is a numeric variable and I have turned it into string.
> The problem is that the following approach:
>
> gen birth_date = date(strbirth_date, "DMY")
> format birth_date %td
>
> does not work I just get missing values. Presumably that is because my 
> date variable is not in the order: day - month - year, but rather year - 
> month - day.
> I then thought I would redo the variable into a correct order and first 
> tried to create 3 separate string variables out of each date: one for 
> year, one for month and one for day.
>
> I tried to do it as follows:
> generate strbirth_date= string(date_of_birth, "%08.0f")
> gen yob = substr(strbirth_date,1,4)
> gen mob = substr(strbirth_date,5,6)
> gen dob = substr(strbirth_date,7,8)
>
> As a result 19560413 turned into: yob=1956
> mob=0413
> dob=13
>
> I do not understand why did the month of birth (mob) did not transform 
> correctly and what can I do next.
> I would be very grateful for any advice as to how I can turn my date 
> variable into a variable Stata10 can recognise,
> 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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