st: RE: String problem

[Joe Canner <jcanner1@jhmi.edu>]

Carlos,

If "*/" is not the only problematic string you have to deal with you can invoke -subinstr()- multiple times (see Nick's post for the syntax) for each character or string you want to get rid of.

Alternatively, you can get the -egenmore- command from SSC and do

. egenmore newvar=sieve(oldvar), omit("*/")

adding additional characters to the -omit()- option as necessary.

Regards,
Joe Canner
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Carlos Avellaneda Suárez
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 11:22 AM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: String problem

Dear Statalist,

I have to merge several datasets where my key variable is a string
variable, with no specific rule about the length of each string
observation. The problem is that there are some characters (i.e. */)
that are mistakenly added at the end of some observations. I would
like to know how to eliminate those characters because they are
causing me troubles when I merge the datasets. I am sorry if this is a
basic question, but I have never faced this problem before and I don't
know how to solve it.

Here is an example of what I have:

ref
WG1855515
WG1855515*/
WIN18555R15
WIN18555R15*/
PCAV
PCAV*/
HKK20560R16
HKK20560R16*/

Here is what I would like to obtain:

ref
WG1855515
WG1855515
WIN18555R15
WIN18555R15
PCAV
PCAV
HKK20560R16
HKK20560R16

Any help is highly appreciated. Best regards.
Carlos
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