Re: st: merge: replace values with missings

[daniel klein <klein.daniel.81@googlemail.com>]

Marc,

I do not see a way to get -merge- to do this, but I would not worry
too much about "detecting all cases" when doing this "by hand". Here
are two ways I can think of. Both seem admittedly rather clumsy, so
hopefully someone will come up with a smarter solution.

You could for example create new variables in your using dataset,
indicating missing values.

u <using_datatset> ,clear
unab vars : *
loc vars : subinstr loc vars "<id>" ""
foreach v of loc vars {
	qui g byte _miss`v' = mi(`v')
}
mer 1:1 id using master
foreach v of loc vars {
	qui replace `v' = . if _miss`v'
}
drop _miss*

You might run into limits of maximum variables allowed here if your
dataset is large. Therefore another way could be to replace missing
values in the using dataset with numerical values that are known not
to be valid values.

u <using_datatset> ,clear
foreach v of var * {
	qui replace `v' = -42 if mi(`v')
}
mer 1:1 id using master
foreach v of var * {
	qui replace `v' = . if (`v' == -42)
}

Note that neither code handles string variables. If you have string
variables you will have to type a few more lines.

Best
Daniel
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