RE: st: imputing dates into a string date

[Tim Evans <Tim.Evans@wmciu.nhs.uk>]

Hi all,

Some time ago I had a problem with imputing dates into a string variable where the date took the form:

XX/01/2012

In the thread below a solution was provided which worked great, however, I now have data takes the form:

/01/2012

To this, I would like to impute a day of "1", but having tried to amend the original code below 

g dx_clean = subinstr(dx, "XX", "01", 1)

to 

g dx_clean = subinstr(dx, "", "01", 1)

The result is that I return the same value i.e. 
XX/01/2012

Does anyone have a suggestion of how I can handle this please?

Best wishes

Tim



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
Sent: 07 June 2012 17:01
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: st: imputing dates into a string date

-subinstr()- is just acting as instructed, replacing the first occurrence of "xx". It's completely indifferent where that occurs if it's not constrained, e.g. by

... if substr(var1, 1, 2) == "xx"

Nick

On 7 Jun 2012, at 16:01, Tim Evans <Tim.Evans@wmciu.nhs.uk> wrote:

> Perhaps I am missing something here.
>
> When I have the following dates in Stata:
>
> var1
> 01/xx/2001
> xx/01/2001
> 01/01/xxxx
>
> and use the code
>
> g dx_clean = subinstr(var1, "xx", "01", 1)
>
> I get:
>
> var1    dx_clean
> 01/xx/2001    01/01/2001
> xx/01/2001    01/01/2001
> 01/01/xxxx    01/01/01xx
>
> The problem seems that both the month gets imputed and also the first 
> part of the missing year.
>
> So I still prefer Nicks original example.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Tim
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner- 
> statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
> Sent: 07 June 2012 15:35
> To: 'statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu'
> Subject: RE: st: imputing dates into a string date
>
> I wouldn't do precisely that. There might be dates with missing months 
> too, for all we know. That code would replace "XX/XX" with "01/01". 
> Replacing a missing day with 1 is one thing; replacing a missing month 
> with January messes up the data. So, ever picky, I recommend instead
>
> g dx_clean = subinstr(dx, "XX", "01", 1)
>
> Nick
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>
> daniel klein
>
> this is (probably) much simpler than you might assume. All you need to 
> type is the one line
>
> g dx_clean = subinstr(dx, "XX", "01", .)
>
>
> Substitute -g dx_clean- in the code with -replace dx- if you want to 
> change your original variable.
>
> Hi all,
> [...]
> This is working fine, until I come across a date that actually starts 
> like this:
>
> xx/01/2010
>
> Then my code to generate a date returns a blank. What I would like to 
> do is add in something that allows me to evaluate whether the day is 
> xx and if so, insert 01.
>
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