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st: RE: RE: RE: RE: inputting string variables in comma-separated files


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   st: RE: RE: RE: RE: inputting string variables in comma-separated files
Date   Thu, 20 May 2004 16:35:25 +0100

Try some variation on 

. infile a b str80 c d e using my.csv

where the "str80" must precede the variable 
name and where "80" can be replaced by the 
largest number of digits. 


Nick 
[email protected] 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of 
> Rebecca Kalmus
> Sent: 20 May 2004 16:13
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: RE: RE: RE: inputting string variables in comma-separated
> files
> 
> 
> That's helpful, thanks.  However, that only works if the 
> variable has the
> same number of digits for all observations.  Suppose one 
> observation is
> 001 and another is 0001, both of which are read into Stata as 
> 1, and no
> observation has more than four digits for this variable.  In that case
> tostring will turn this variable into 0001 for both these 
> observations.
> 
> Rebecca Kalmus
> 
> *********************************************************************
> 
> I think what Nick was trying to get at is that you can 
> recreate your lost
> leading zeroes by using the -format()- option in -tostring- 
> as illustrated
> below.
> Joseph Coveney
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> . clear
> . set obs 5
> obs was 0, now 5
> . generate int x = 10^(_n - 1)  // <- original comma-separated values
> . tostring x, generate(sx) format(%05.0f)  // note the format--leading
> zeroes
> sx generated as str5
> . clist, noobs
>        x         sx
>        1      00001
>       10      00010
>      100      00100
>     1000      01000
>    10000      10000
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ------------------
> From: Rebecca Kalmus wrote:
> Once I've read the comma-separated file into Stata, Stata has 
> already read
> the variable as numeric.  The leading zeros are already gone, so
> converting the variable to string using tostring doesn't help.
> In the past I've gotten around this problem by converting the
> comma-separated file to Stata format using Stat/transfer, 
> with which I can
> specify that the variable should be read as string.  However, it seems
> like there should be a more straightforward solution.
> Rebecca Kalmus
> > >From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
> > To   <[email protected]>
> > Subject   st: RE: inputting string variables in 
> comma-separated files
> > Date   Tue, 18 May 2004 19:46:19 +0100
> >
> > A good bet in this circumstance is to make
> > it a string variable again using -tostring-.
> > Make sure you specify a format which produces
> > leading zeros.
> >
> > Nick
> > [email protected]
> >
> *
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> 

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