Re: st: imputing dates into a string date

[Sergiy Radyakin <serjradyakin@gmail.com>]

the discussion so far sounds quite confusing, and I still see no
reason to use regular expressions instead of much more intuitive
-replace-.

Here is my approach (type in Stata and not in the browser):

net from http://www.adeptanalytics.org/radyakin/stata/cleandate/

Best, Sergiy.

. clear

.
. input str10 dirty

          dirty
  1. "//"
  2. "14//"
  3. "01/xx/2001"
  4. "xx/01/2001"
  5. "01/01/xxxx"
  6. end

.
. list

     +------------+
     |      dirty |
     |------------|
  1. |         // |
  2. |       14// |
  3. | 01/xx/2001 |
  4. | xx/01/2001 |
  5. | 01/01/xxxx |
     +------------+

.   cleandate dirty, gen(clean) d(15) m(06) y(2012) sep("/")

. list

     +-------------------------+
     |      dirty        clean |
     |-------------------------|
  1. |         //   15/06/2012 |
  2. |       14//   14/06/2012 |
  3. | 01/xx/2001   01/06/2001 |
  4. | xx/01/2001   15/01/2001 |
  5. | 01/01/xxxx   01/01/2012 |
     +-------------------------+






On Fri, Jun 7, 2013 at 8:48 AM, Tim Evans <Tim.Evans@wmciu.nhs.uk> wrote:
> Nick, Joseph,
>
> Thank you for the comments - and I readily acknowledge the potential bias of imputing dates. The Stata tip is potentially one avenue for me to explore - but unfortunately I don't have access to that.
>
> 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 2013 13:12
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: st: imputing dates into a string date
>
> Just to spell out what will be obvious to Joseph and Tim: Sometimes other dates provide constraints on what the dates might be.
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com
>
>
> On 7 June 2013 12:51, Joseph Coveney <stajc2@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tim Evans wrote:
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> If you've got missing elements other than just the day, it might be
>> better to use -split-, and impute the days, months and years
>> separately with their different defaults.  You can then re-assemble
>> the elements with simple string concatenation (or convert the imputed dates to a Stata date).
>>
>> Joseph Coveney
>>
>> . version 12.1
>>
>> .
>> . clear *
>>
>> . set more off
>>
>> .
>> . input str10 dx
>>
>>              dx
>>   1. "01//2001"
>>   2. "/01/2001"
>>   3. "01/01/"
>>   4. end
>>
>> .
>> . split dx, generate(d_) parse(/)
>> variables created as string:
>> d_1  d_2  d_3
>>
>> . replace d_1 = "15" if missing(d_1) // Missing days as approx.
>> midmonth
>> (1 real change made)
>>
>> . replace d_2 = "06" if missing(d_2) // Missing months as approx.
>> midyear
>> (1 real change made)
>>
>> . replace d_3 = "2012" if missing(d_3) // Missing year as most recent
>> full year
>> (1 real change made)
>>
>> .
>> . generate int imputed_dt = date(d_3 + d_2 + d_1, "YMD")
>>
>> . format imputed_dt %tdCCYY-NN-DD
>>
>> .
>> . generate str10 clean_dx = d_1 + "/" + d_2 + "/" + d_3
>>
>> . list dx clean_dx imputed_dt, noobs abbreviate(20)
>>
>>   +------------------------------------+
>>   |       dx     clean_dx   imputed_dt |
>>   |------------------------------------|
>>   | 01//2001   01/06/2001   2001-06-01 |
>>   | /01/2001   15/01/2001   2001-01-15 |
>>   |   01/01/   01/01/2012   2012-01-01 |
>>   +------------------------------------+
>>
>> .
>> . exit
>>
>> end of do-file
>>
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