Re: st: creating a new variable

[Gary Longton <glongton@fhcrc.org>]

<>
It is not clear what you mean by "the x variable is not consistent 
between the two tables", so I'll take a guess that it is one of the 
following two possibilities.  Will assume Db parlance for "tables", i.e 
"datasets" in Stata.

If you mean that x is of different storage type in the 2 datasets - 
numeric in one and numeric values stored as string type in the other - 
then convert x in the latter using -destring- prior to merging (-help 
destring-).

If, on the other hand, you mean that there is not a complete overlap of 
x values (within combinations of ID and x2 values) between the datasets, 
-merge- will handle this and flag the origin of non-overlapping 
observations accordingly.  This is fairly clearly explained in the help 
for -merge-.

Maybe you meant something else by "not consistent"?  If so, please 
elaborate.

- Gary

On 1/21/2011 8:25 AM, King, Carina wrote:

> I want to create a new 'x' variable as I need to merge two tables using ID, x, and x2 as the unique merging variables and the x variable is not consistent between the two tables. How can I do this?
>
> ID   x        x2
> 1    51732    2
> 1    51732    3
> 1    51732    5
> 1    51732    8
> 1    33575    2
> 2    0        2
> 3    0        1
> 3    0        2
> 3    0        3
> 3    77890    4
> 3    77890    5
> 3    22345    6
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