Re: st: RE: strpos: cleaning string variables

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

You are quite correct about -drop-ping those variables, so that's not a bug.

I suggest something like

foreach x of local xlist {
            replace `x' = trim(`x')
            replace `x' = subinstr(`x', ".", " ", .)
            replace `x' = subinstr(`x'. ",", " ", .)
            replace `x' = subinstr(`x', "&", "and", .)
}

-subinstr()- is a function, not a command.

Nick

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 11:10 PM, Emily Farchy
<emily.farchy@sant.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> Thanks a lot Nick,
>
> This looks like a really useful command.
>
> NB the loop dropped the generated vars at the end so it did run fine, but didn't accomplish what I needed, I'll try again with subinstr() command
>
> Emily
>
> On Feb 21, 2011, at 8:36 PM, Nick Cox wrote:
>
>> -strpos()- is a function, not a command.
>>
>> You can eliminate substrings of length 1 if you wish using -subinstr()-. As -subinstr()- can delete more than one occurrence at a time it is likely to be an answer to your question about the n th occurrence.
>>
>> Your loop is going to fail second time around if only because you are then trying to -generate- variables that already exist. Again, you don't need to loop over , . & as you can work on them using separate commands within the loop.
>>
>> Nick
>> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>>
>> Emily Farchy
>>
>> I would like to run a loop to transform some messy names into cleaner versions eg
>> "Drs. H. Muslim Kasim, Ak"--> "Muslim Kasim"
>> "Drs. Makmur Syahputra, Sh" -->"Makmur Syah Putra"
>> "H Amru Helmy Daulay Sh" --> "Amru Helmy Daulay"
>>
>> I was thinking of using the strpos command which seems like it might be useful but is there a way to get it to find the nth occurrence (eg of a space) and a way to eliminate substrings of for example 3 letters or less?
>>
>> I was working on the following but get stuck when I pass the first occurence
>>
>> foreach x of local xlist {
>>
>>       **** get rid of . , or & in name (A, B --> A B; st. A -->  st A, A & B --> A and B)
>>       foreach z in , . & {
>>               qui gen `x'_bh= trim(substr(`x', 1, strpos(`x', "`z'")-1))
>>               qui gen `x'_ah= trim(substr(`x', strpos (`x', "`z'")+1, 50))
>>               qui gen `x'_mid= substr(`x', strpos (`x', "`z'"), 1)
>>
>>               replace `x'=trim(`x'_bh+" "+`x'_ah)
>>               replace `x'=trim(`x'_bh+" and "+`x'_ah) if `x'_mid=="&"
>>
>>               drop `x'_bh `x'_ah `x'_mid
>>               }
>>       }

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