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Re: st: creating new id variable
From
Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: st: creating new id variable
Date
Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:44:13 +0100
Good advice. See also
Cox, N.J. 2010. Stata tip 85: Looping over nonintegers. Stata Journal
10(1): 160-163
On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 12:18 PM, Joseph Coveney <[email protected]> wrote:
> Nick Cox wrote:
>
> Second example should have been
>
> gen newid = cond(id1 < 10, "0" + string(id1), string(id1)) + cond(id2
>> < 10, "0" + string(id2), string(id2))
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Just to mention an alternative when converting numerical components to a single
> string ID, I like to use something like
>
> generate str newid = string(id1, "02.0f") + string(id2, "02.0f")
>
> I find it a little easier to code. Adjust the format expressions based upon the
> maxima of the numerical components, keeping in mind that as the size increases,
> a delimiter (hyphen or space) very much helps with readability:
>
> generate str newid = string(id1, "03.0f") + "-" + string(id2, "04.0f")
>
> In addition, for concatenating string numerals, -substr()- might be a slightly
> easier alternative for those who come to Stata with experience of left() and
> right() string functions in other languages:
>
> generate str newid = substr("0" + id1, -2, 2) + substr("0" + id2, -2, 2)
>
> Joseph Coveney
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