Re: st: How to insert decimal point?

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

You are confusing what a number is and how it is displayed. For
example, Stata does not remove trailing zeros; it is just not
displaying them with your format. You need to assign a format with
leading zeros and two decimal places to get numbers displayed as you
want. See -help format-.

That said, you won't get exact arithmetic with such numeric variables
unless your nunbers hold cents, not dollars.

Nick

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:08 PM, Lucie Vlach
<Lucie.Vlach@albertahealthservices.ca> wrote:
> hello Rich!
>
> I tried your command for the string version and it worked! Thank you very much!
>
> I also tried to destring that _after_ your command, and it simply removed all zeros, and in some cases the decimal point, if the value was only 1. (original number 000000100)
>
> -------------------
> . replace Claimed_Amount=substr(Claimed_Amount,1,7)+"."+substr(Claimed_Amount,8,2)
> Claimed_Amount was str9 now str10
> (27819 real changes made)
>
> . destring  Claimed_Amount, replace
> Claimed_Amount has all characters numeric; replaced as double
> -------------------
>
> I think I can live with that, basically in our data, 000005161 got changed to 0000051.61 though the first command and to 51.61 using 'destring' command. To us here it means $51.61 in plain language.
>
> Thank you!
>
> Lucie
>
>
>
> --
> ________________________________________
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Richard Goldstein [richgold@ix.netcom.com]
> Sent: August 23, 2011 1:32 PM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: st: How to insert decimal point?
>
> you don't tell us whether this is a number or a string variable; nor do
> you tell us what the format is
>
> if it is a number, divide by 100; if you need to change the format, see
> -help format-
>
> if it is a string and you want to leave it as a string, try the following:
>
> replace
> Claimed_Amount=substr(Claimed_Amount,1,7)+"."+substr(Claimed_Amount,8,2)
>
> but note that this will make it 10 characters long; if you want it to
> stay 9 characters, replace the "1" in the first substr() with a "2"
> (assuming you won't lose any information that way)
>
> Rich
>
> On 8/23/11 3:21 PM, Lucie Vlach wrote:
>> Hello all!
>>
>> I have a problem, trying to format my data in my 'Claimed_Amount' variable to say 0000051.61 (not 000005161) and 0000067.31 etc.
>>
>> I am trying to insert the decimal point, two spaces from the end, in this numeric variable.
>> Each is number is 9 spaces long.
>>
>> 000005161 should display 0000051.61
>>
>> DATA:
>> Claimed_Amount
>> 000005161
>> 000006731
>> 000006666
>> 000008890
>> 000002256
>> 000008301
>> 000005161
>> 000005161
>> 000006731
>> 000008890
>> 000002256
>> 000007449
>> 000011889
>> 000005879
>> 000009019
>> 000005161
>> etc.
>>

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