RE: st: quick question

["Lachenbruch, Peter" <Peter.Lachenbruch@oregonstate.edu>]

Thanks to Austin - the problem is solved.  To answer a couple of questions in the responses:
1.	my goal is simply to count the number of 'other_rashes' - the encoding was to plug in as many different rashes as possible into one string variable.  I could have looked at each rash individually, but most appeared only a few times, and I decided the best approach was to give the number.
2.	many solutions used the split command - it choked on the variable other_rash - apparently it didn't like the underscore.  I renamed the variable otherrash and it sort of worked, but gave me some strings and some numeric.  Austin's worked and basically agreed with my manual solution (and I detected some errors in my coding! - nothing like a dose of humility for a Wednesday morning)
3.	I'm about to try Martin Weiss's solution - haven't yet
4.	I wanted to count the "0" as 0 - no rashes.  I'll check the split command with Eric's option.	

Thanks you all for your rapid response.  My next headache is a bunch of responses that have some coding the investigators haven't told me about.  I don't think there's much the Stata list can do to resolve that, unless there's a new expression of disgust rather than grrr!
Tony

Peter A. Lachenbruch
Department of Public Health
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97330
Phone: 541-737-3832
FAX: 541-737-4001


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Austin Nichols
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 3:04 PM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: st: quick question

Tony <Peter.Lachenbruch@oregonstate.edu> :
There are many ways to go, and the optimal choice no doubt depends on
what you might want to do with the data later, but try e.g.

clear
input str15 other
"55.1"
"0"
"54.3"
"0"
"0"
"55.2"
"0"
"0"
"17.3;49.3"
end
g o=other if other!="0"
replace o=subinstr(o,";"," ",.)
g n=wordcount(o)
l, noo

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 4:38 PM, Lachenbruch, Peter
<Peter.Lachenbruch@oregonstate.edu> wrote:
> I have a list of multiple diagnoses (rashes) and the typical one is quite rare.  I decided to simply count the number of such diagnoses.  The data look like (in the first 50 observations)
>
>     +--------------------+
>     |         other_rash |
>     |--------------------|
>  10. |               55.1 |
>  11. |                  0 |
>  12. |               54.3 |
>  13. |                  0 |
>  14. |                  0 |
>     |--------------------|
>  15. |               55.2 |
>  16. |                  0 |
>  17. |                  0 |
>  18. |          17.3;49.3 |
>  19. |               55.2 |
>     |--------------------|
>  20. |          11.3;18.3 |
>  21. |                  0 |
>  22. |                  0 |
>  23. |                  0 |
>  24. |      9.2;11.3;17.3 |
> I would like to be able to count the number of other_rashes - I tried to find a string function that would do this count, I was unsuccessful.  Am I missing something?  It's not crucial as I've already done this manually, but I have several other variables to handle.

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