st: Date conversion in batch

[Simon <scmoore.lists@googlemail.com>]

Dear Statalist,

I have been sent a load of excel files that I want to combine into one 
Stata file for analysis. First I use Roger Newson's stcmd with 
Stat-transfer to convert the files to Stata files:

clear
cd "`dir'"
stcmd *.xls *.dta /y

and then use Nick Cox's -fs- to

set obs 0
g age = .
g date = ""

fs *.dta
foreach f in `r(files)' {
local fn = "`dir'\`f'"
append using "`fn'"
}

My problem is that date, coming from excel, is all over the place. 
There's the text version of dd/mm/yyyy and the excel version of 
dd/mm/yyyy and then various other formats including ddmmyy and ddmmyyyy.

Just wondering if anyone had come across something similar and whether 
there is an easy solution - or am I destined to do this all by hand?

Simon


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