st: precision Problem taking string from double var

[<Stefan.Gawrich@hlpug.hessen.de>]

Hi,

yesterday I ran into a severe error caused by some precision(?) problem with a double var.
I know what happened but not how it happened and I'm wondering how to avoid this in future.


I use record linkage software which creates Stata output files. The linkage score is stored in a double var. 
I don't need that precision (two decimal places are enough, but I can't change this)

I use a  Stata do-File to export the Stata output files to fixed format text files.
The files are given to a database for further processing.
The linkage score must be  XX.XX (eg. 45.34) in the text files.

I use string functions to take the data out of the linkage score var "quality":

gen str5 linkage_score = substr(string(quality),1,2) + "." + substr(string(quality),4,2) 

Now I found that in one case "45.0000037" the last function produces ""

One can see that ".0000" is o.k. but ".00000" is not.

. di substr(string(45.0000037),4,2)


. di substr(string(45.000037),4,2)
00

This rearranged the var positions in the output files causing a database error

I have huge record linkage numbers so this is likely to happen again. How can I avoid that?

Stefan Gawrich
Dillenburg
Germany












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