Re: st: getting part of strings

[Eric Booth <ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu>]

<>

On Mar 26, 2011, at 10:10 PM, Rebecca Pope wrote:

> Daniel,
> You could try using char(). The ASCII equivalent to "A" is 69; for "Z"
> it is 90. Maybe something like this would work for you (piggy-backing
> on Nick's earlier suggestion):
> 
> clonevar copy = var1
> replace copy = upper(copy)
> qui forval i = 69/90 {
>     local letter = char(`i')
>     replace copy = subinstr(copy, "`letter'", "", .)
> }

Another option is to use c(alpha) and c(ALPHA) for standard alpha characters
********modifying NJC's example:
clonevar copy = var1
qui foreach i in `c(alpha)' `c(ALPHA)'  {
           replace copy = subinstr(copy, "`i'", "", .)
} 
*******

> 
> This won't work for all of your text (e.g. Ã). I don't know of any way
> to look the numeric values up in Stata, so I'll plug a previous post
> by Nick
> (http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2006-12/msg00446.html) and
> advise you to look up the ASCII codes for any accented letters by
> searching the internet for "ANSI character code chart". You'll need to
> modify the code above to add any additional numbers you need & switch
> to -foreach- with -numlist-.

Take a look at -ascii- and -asciiplot- from SSC.
Also, you can get a list of all the chars used in var1 with -charlist- from SSC.


- Eric

__
Eric A. Booth
Public Policy Research Institute
Texas A&M University
ebooth@ppri.tamu.edu




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