RE: st: creating a text file with a specific format

[Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

Is this a general question, or a specific question about Austin Nichols' -outfixt-? 

In general: Convert to string first. 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Michael Eisenberg

Thanks so much.

Is there a way to replace missing values with no characters rather than a "." ?



On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 7:05 AM, Austin Nichols <austinnichols@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael Eisenberg <meisenberg713@gmail.com>:
> replace lastname=substr(lastname,1,20)
> *etc, then:
> ssc install outfixt
>
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:56 AM, Michael Eisenberg
> <meisenberg713@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Colleagues,
>>
>> I have to prepare a file for a linkage project, and I’m hoping stata can assist.
>>
>> Currently my data is in a stata data file.
>>
>> The linkage company requires a set format of data in a plain text format.
>>
>> The format assumes 100 characters per line. Where () represents which
>> line characters are assigned to a given field.   If a variable has
>> more characters than the designated number of characters, it is to be
>> truncated
>>
>> (1-20) LAST NAME
>> (21-35) FIRST NAME
>> (36) MIDDLE INITIAL
>> (37-45) SSN
>> (46-47) MONTH OF BIRTH
>> (48-49) DAY OF BIRTH
>> (50-53) YEAR OF BIRTH
>>
>> The data currently looks like this
>>
>> Lastname  firstname  middlename   SSN           MonOB   DaOB    YrOB
>> Smith   John             Thomas 122342789            01 04              1947
>> Jones   Craig   Harvey  600656785            10 24              1957
>> Stata           Jim             Smith   423456751            12 06              1970
>> Johnson Mike            Thomas  056445671     01        16              1971
>>
>> Can Stata perform such a transformation?  If not, are there other
>> programs that could be recommended.

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