Re: st: MM/DD/YYYY string to stata date

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Here is another way to do it. Consider a date like "1/1/2010" and
assume that there is no problem of ambiguity, e.g. you know your dates
to be DMY.

First, you have a problem if the second character is "/", which you can fix:

replace datevar = "0" + datevar if substr(datevar, 2, 1) == "/"

So "1/1/2010" is now "01/1/2010".

Second, you still have a problem if the fifth character is "/", which
you can fix:

replace datevar = substr(datevar,1,3) + "0" + substr(datevar, 4, .) if
substr(datevar, 5, 1) == "/"

OR

replace datevar = subinstr(datevar, "/", "/0", 1) if substr(datevar,
5, 1) == "/"

Nick

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 7:13 AM, daniel klein
<klein.daniel.81@googlemail.com> wrote:

> here is one way to go.
>
> // split the string variable into parts
> split <mystrvar> ,g(part) p("/")
>
> // add leading zero
> forv j = 1/2 {
>        replace part`j' = "0" + part`j' if length(part`j') < 2
> }
>
> // now put it back together
> g tmp = part1 + part2 + part3
>
> // transfer to date
> g mydate = date(tmp, "MDY")
> form mydate %td
>
> // clean up
> drop part? tmp

Lars

> Thank you both.
>
> Nick: i dont want to make it hard for Stata. How do i go from string
> mm/dd/yyyy to date?

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