Glad you solved your problem. I seize
the opportunity to plug the multi-author
FAQ on text editors and Stata:
http://fmwww.bc.edu/repec/bocode/t/textEditors.html
Now on -charlist- and -destring-, you are indeed incorrect, but
forgiveably so!
-charlist- is a user-written program from SSC,
which I wrote during the lifetime of Stata 7.
-destring- is an official Stata command.
It is true that -charlist- did not find any
exotic characters that are also obviously
visible using the font I tried in the Results window.
. charlist rank
0123456789�
However, occurrences of char(160) are
indicated by the results left in memory
by -charlist-:
. ret li
macros:
r(chars) : " 0123456789�"
r(sepchars) : " 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 � "
r(ascii) : "32 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 160 "
And -destring- is empowered once that information is
available:
. destring rank, ignore(`=char(160)') replace
rank: characters � removed; replaced as int
I understand char(160) to be what HTML calls
a non-breakable space, so it is indeed difficult
to see when output as the highest ASCII character present,
but realising that we can see that Stata did
its level best to show it. Look carefully at the
results of -ret li-.
How and why char(160) differs from char(32)
I am hoping someone will be able to explain.
Perhaps the two characters exist for the convenience of word
processing software.
This also explains why -list- was no apparent help here.
-list- showed char(160) but not distinguishably.
Nick
[email protected]
Daniel Egan
> Thanks to Ronan, Roger, and Dan Blanchette (offlist) for assistance
> with this. In the end a text editor was used to erase the hidden
> characters, and Dan Blanchette wrote a nifty little program (specific
> to my dataset?) which evicted the unwanted characters.
>
> As a final note for clarity's sake, I did in fact -list-, -browse-,
> and even -charlist- the string variables. -charlist- did not return
> any non-numeric elements, thus -destring, ignore()- was impotent. As
> far as I know therefore, the only means to detect these characters is
> with a text editor.
>
> If I am incorrect, please let me know.
>
> Cheers,
> Dan
>
>
>
> On 4/26/05, Ron�n Conroy <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Daniel Egan wrote:
> >
> > > Hello list,
> > >
> > > I am having a strange problem converting strings into numerical
> > > format. I have a string which by all appearances is just a number.
> > >
> >
> > Daniel's data did indeed contain odd characters which are invisible
> > under normal circumstances. A good text editor will show
> them and allow
> > you to zap them. Actually, any text editor will do this; a good text
> > editor will do it free.
>
> *
> * For searches and help try:
> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
> * http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
