Re: st: Extract parts of a string variable

["Roger B. Newson" <r.newson@imperial.ac.uk>]

You don't say whether it is possible for more than 1 of the pollutant 
names you are searching for to be present at the same time. The answer 
to this question affects the correct way to proceed.

However, if it may be possible for 2 or more pollutant strings to be 
present, then you should define 1 indicator variable for each pollutant.
Assuming that your string variable has the name -messy-, your code might 
read:

foreach PO in co no2 nox o3 pm10 pm25 {;
 gene byte pres_`PO'=strpos(messy,"`PO'")>0;
 lab var pres_`PO' "Presence of `PO'";
 tab pres_`PO', m;
};

This will create 6 indicator variables pres_co, pres_no2, pres_nox, 
pres_o3, pres_pm10 and pres_pm25. You can then use these variables in 
further processing.

I hope this helps.

Best wishes

Roger


Roger B Newson BSc MSc DPhil
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Respiratory Epidemiology and Public Health Group
National Heart and Lung Institute
Imperial College London
Royal Brompton Campus
Room 33, Emmanuel Kaye Building
1B Manresa Road
London SW3 6LR
UNITED KINGDOM
Tel: +44 (0)20 7352 8121 ext 3381
Fax: +44 (0)20 7351 8322
Email: r.newson@imperial.ac.uk
Web page: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/nhli/r.newson/
Departmental Web page:
http://www1.imperial.ac.uk/medicine/about/divisions/nhli/respiration/popgenetics/reph/

Opinions expressed are those of the author, not of the institution.

On 05/11/2012 11:05, Kuma Raj wrote:
> I have a messy string variable that contains names of various air
> pollutants. The contents and naming is based on the name of the
> pollutant, lags, station name,
> and different exposure metrics. There is no uniformity or fixed
> position of the contents in the variable name.  I am interested to
> parse the variable and extract the names of the pollutants if they are
> specific strings. How can I do that ?
>
> A sample of the variable is found below and I am interested to extract
> the following strings:- co, no2, nox, o3, pm10,  and pm25
>
> L1comeanH10
> L1comeanS10
> no2T10
> L1no2T10
> L1noxT10
> L1o3maxA10
> comeanS10_01
> L3o3maxM10
> L1o3meanM10
> L1o3maxT10
> L2pm10T10
> L1pm25T10
>
> Thanks in advance
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