Re: st: RE: Problems with execution of conditional branching..

[Mani Subramani <subra010@umn.edu>]

Sarah
Thank you very much for a prompt and detailed explanation...this was
driving me completely crazy particularly since I tried all kinds of
conditional branches with differing logic to do the parsing, to no
avail. I have been stuck at this juncture from the beginning of the
week and I can now move forward!
Your response showing how I can get a line by line evaluation done is
a nuance I missed understanding earlier.. this is enormously useful.

BTW, do you mind letting me know the norm to thank responders on
Statalist...is a response to the list appropriate or is it expected
that we do it in private.

thanks a lot for taking the time to respond.
best wishes
Mani

On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 8:22 PM, Sarah Edgington <sedging@ucla.edu> wrote:
> I think Scott's suggestion about how to tackle this problem probably offers
> a more efficient strategy than this one.
> However, know why this example doesn't work will probably also be helpful to
> you in the future.
>
> The problem is that the if statements here are only evaluating your first
> observation.  See -help ifcmd- and -help if- for more details.
> The thing that I think isn't entirely clear from the helpfile is that the
> programming if checks the conditional statement once and if it's true it
> takes the action in the braces.  Unless otherwise specified it evaluates the
> first observation in the data when the conditional involves a variable.
> To get an observation by observation evaluation of a conditional you have to
> use the if expression after a command.
> So -gen event_month=substr(opendate,6,1) if comma_3==2 & comma_2==1- will
> check that condition for each observation and create the relevant variable.
>
> Contrast that with a simplification of your first conditional (written as a
> single line instead of in braces)
> -if comma_3==2 & comma_2==1 gen event_month = substr(opendate, 6,1)-
> Here Stata is only evaluating the conditional once.  Since it involves
> variables (which, by virtue of being variables are going to be different
> across observations) there has to be some rule about what observation is
> used to evaluate this statement.  Since you haven't specified an observation
> number to evaluate, it defaults to the first observation.
>
> So running your code will perform only one of the four possible sets of
> commands you specified.  Which one it performs depends entirely on the first
> observation in the data.
>
> Hopefully that helps clear up what's going on here.
>
> -Sarah
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Mani Subramani
> Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:39 PM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: st: Problems with execution of conditional branching..
>
> I am new to Stata but I have programmed before (SPSS, SAS) etc. andI am
> confused by the behavior of STATA in executing the code below.
>
> I am trying to parse a date-string that is currently in one variable with
> format "yyyy-mm-dd-hh-ss"..it unfortunately has 1 digit months and days.
> Further, because of the unconventional numbering of months (0-11, rather
> than 1-12), I am unable to use the much easier
> dofc(Opendate)) command build into STATA that does some intelligent
> validation and fails to import dates like October 31 (which is indicated in
> my data as 2012,9,31
>
> I use the location of the comma separators to parse the string with strpos
> to create variables...the code runs..but it clearly does not work properly.
> I still have some dates with ",7" which I find inexplicable because the
> branch where this should get executed picks  only 1 character dates.
> I have four mutually exclusive branches to handle the different combinations
> of 2 digit and 1 digit month, day...but for some reason..this is not working
> properly.
> Some of the statements within branches that are excluded by the if seem to
> be getting executed...
>
> This would be ideally executed with a Case statement -or with Regex (I tried
> but couldnt figure it out)  but the code below should be doing that but it
> clearly isn't. Thanks in advance for your help thanks in advance for your
> help Mani ==================== gen event_year = substr(opendate, 1,4)
> //this works just fine, year always 4 digits // I test for pattern of month,
> day based on location of comma3 and
> comma2 in date string
> //date string format:  yyyy,mm,dd - month, day can be either 1 or 2 digits
> //  location of third comma - it is either in 9, 10 or 11
>
> gen comma_3 = strpos(substr(opendate,9,3), ",") // 1= 1 dig month& date, 3+2
> dig month, date, 2 = unclear gen comma_2 = strpos(substr(opendate,7,2), ",")
> //when comma3 is ;
> comma_2==1 indicates m,dd; comma_2==2 - mm,d
>
> if comma_3==2 & comma_2==1 {
> gen event_month = substr(opendate, 6,1)
> gen event_day = substr(opendate, 8,2)
> }
> else if comma_3==2 & comma_2==2 {
> gen event_month = substr(opendate, 6,2)
> gen event_day = substr(opendate, 9,1)
> }
>
> else if comma_3==1 {
> gen event_month = substr(opendate, 6,1)
> gen event_day = substr(opendate, 8,1)
> }
> else if comma_3==3 {
> gen event_month = substr(opendate, 6,2)
> gen event_day = substr(opendate, 9,2)
> }
>
> ==================  results===
> opendate        comma_3 comma_2 event_year      event_month     event_day
> 2012,9,18,13,21,12      2       1       2012    9       18
> 2012,9,18,10,51,33      2       1       2012    9       18
> 2012,9,22,16,23,48      2       1       2012    9       22
> 2012,10,29,14,59,52     3       2       2012    1       ,2
> 2012,10,21,23,57,29     3       2       2012    1       ,2
> 2012,10,22,20,10,23     3       2       2012    1       ,2
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-- 
Mani Subramani, msubramani@umn.edu
Information and Decision Sciences Department
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455.
612-624-3522
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