st: appending date variable in 2 datafiles

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Hi all,

I have a date variable in a stata datafile :

DATAFILE A

	+-----------+
	doa
	-----------
1.	14dec2010
2.	19dec2010
3.	30mar2010
4.	16jun2010
5.	06jan2010
	+-----------+

and I have a date variable also in a stata datafile that I would like
to append to the datafile above (DATAFILE A)

DATAFILE B

+------------------------+
doa                  date3
------------------------
1.  23-05-2012           .
2.  03-11-2011   11mar2011
3.  02-09-2010   09feb2010
4.  01-07-2010   07jan2010
5.  18-04-2012           .
+------------------------+

The problem is both datafiles use different format of date, the former
uses numeric and the latter uses str. My questions would be
1) what is the best way to work around appending this two datafiles
2) i have converted the 'doa' in the latter file (DATAFILE B) using

generate date3=date(doa,"MDY")
format date3 %d

but only obs from 2 to 4 were converted but obs 1 and 5 were not.

Really appreciate if someone can help me with these 2 questions.

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