RE: st: -destring- and missing values

[Joe Canner <jcanner1@jhmi.edu>]

-sieve()- doesn't require knowing what the non-visible characters are, but you are right that with -charlist-, -destring , ignore()- is not so onerous and probably useful for avoiding gunk in the future.
________________________________________
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] on behalf of Nick Cox [njcoxstata@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 3:05 PM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: st: -destring- and missing values

Could be, but -destring, ignore()- is directly to the point.

Either way, you have to know what gunk you have to filter out, on
which I once more mention -charlist- (SSC).

(-egenmore- is also from SSC.)
Nick
njcoxstata@gmail.com


On 2 October 2013 20:03, Joe Canner <jcanner1@jhmi.edu> wrote:
> Would the -egen sieve()- function from the -egenmore- package be of use here to create a variable that just has numbers that could then be destrung?
> ________________________________________
> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] on behalf of Nick Cox [njcoxstata@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 2:55 PM
> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> Subject: Re: st: -destring- and missing values
>
> As the original author of -destring-, I retain some prejudices about
> its use. The -force- option was added for the desperate and brutal
> when so inclined. What's perhaps even more crucial is that it isn't
> smart.
>
> . set obs 1
> obs was 0, now 1
>
> . gen foo = "1" + char(160)
>
> . destring foo, replace
> foo contains nonnumeric characters; no replace
>
> . destring foo, replace force
> foo contains nonnumeric characters; replaced as byte
> (1 missing value generated)
>
> Thus with stray char(160) Stata just goes ahead and doesn't do what
> you might want, ignore all non-numeric characters. It doesn't know any
> more what to do than without -force-.
>
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com
>
>
> On 2 October 2013 19:46, Jeph Herrin <stata@spandrel.net> wrote:
>> Thanks. I my case, I have a few variables that are not numeric; I don't want
>> those converted to real. Nor do I want to sort out in advance which are
>> which - I want to -destring- exactly those variables with only numerical
>> values stored as strings.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>> [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Steve Nakoneshny
>> Sent: Wednesday, October 02, 2013 12:13 PM
>> To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
>> Subject: Re: st: -destring- and missing values
>>
>> Jeph,
>>
>> Can you not take advantage of the -force- option of -destring- here?
>>
>> Steve
>>
>> On 2013-10-02, at 10:07 AM, Jeph Herrin 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.
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