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RE: st: -destring- and missing values


From   "Jeph Herrin" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: -destring- and missing values
Date   Wed, 2 Oct 2013 12:53:18 -0400

Thanks, that did it. char(160) embedded in each.

J


-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nick Cox
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 12:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: -destring- and missing values

I'd check for non-standard characters that can't be printed, e.g.
using -charlist- (SSC).

I agree with the principle that -destring- should ignore spaces.
Nick
[email protected]


On 2 October 2013 17:07, Jeph Herrin <[email protected]> wrote:
> All,
>
> I have hundreds of variables that look like this:
>
> . d q1
>
>               storage   display    value
> variable name   type    format     label      variable label
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> q1               str2    %2s
>
> . tab q1, m
>
>         q1  |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
> ------------+-----------------------------------
>             |          2        0.89        0.89
>          1  |        216       96.00       96.89
>          2  |          7        3.11      100.00
> ------------+-----------------------------------
>       Total |        225      100.00
>
> but when I try to use -destring-
>
> . destring q1, replace
> q1  contains nonnumeric characters; no replace
>
> According to the documentation,
>
>     destring treats both empty strings "" and "." as indicating 
> sysmiss (.)...
>     destring also ignores any leading or trailing spaces so that, for 
> example,
>     " " is equivalent to "" and " . " is equivalent to ".".
>
> Why is -destring- not converting my variables to numeric? I think I 
> must be missing something very obvious.
>
> I can get around this by
>
>  replace q1 = "." if mi(q1)
>
> but I don't think I should have to.
>
>
> J
>
>
>
>
>
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