Re: st: Unable to use "replace" on specific values (but others work ok)

[Anna Reimondos <areimondos@gmail.com>]

Thanks for all your help.

Yes I can confirm that I wrote the comment because I was working from a
do-file and just wanted to make it clear which line was the problematic one.

Nick I think you are right about the extended characters again!
I did a hexdump analysis of the do-file which said there were some 'bad'
characters (160-254). I am not sure how they are creeping in as I have
never had this problem before.

Line-end characters Line length (tab=1)
\r\n         (Windows)          2,690 minimum 1
\r by itself (Mac)                  0 maximum 279
\n by itself (Unix)                 0
Space/separator characters Number of lines 2,690
[blank]                         7,863 EOL at EOF? yes
[tab]                              25
[comma] (,)                       517 Length of first 5 lines
Control characters Line 1 95
binary 0                            0 Line 2 13
CTL excl. \r, \n, \t                0 Line 3 95
DEL                                 0 Line 4 1
Extended (128-159,255)              0 Line 5 1
ASCII printable
A-Z                               248
a-z                            52,148 File format         EXTENDED ASCII
0-9                            24,944
Special (!@#$ etc.)             9,513
Extended (160-254)                  8
---------------
Total                           100,646


Anyhow I just tried I deleted the problematic lines, and just typed them
all in again (perhaps not the most elegant solution of course) and it
seemed to work!

Thanks again!

Anna Reimondos

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Justina Fischer <JAVFischer@gmx.de> wrote:
>
> This happened also to me quite often and Nick's explanation was right in
> my case (e.g. a space or the other sign do not see but that corrupts your
> commands in the do-file).
>
> The eseaiest way to overcome this problem is to avoid copying command
> lines, but to write them by hand instead each time.
>
> Justina
>
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> > Datum: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 01:09:52 +0100
> > Von: Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>
> > An: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
> > Betreff: Re: st: Unable to use "replace" on specific values (but others
> > work ok)
>
> > I can't reproduce your problem. However, if your do-file or command
> > lines are corrupted by strange characters such as char(160) -- recall
> > the previous thread you started -- you might get some very odd
> > messages about invalid names. Use -hexdump- on a file containing
> > commands.
> >
> > Also, you are using a -float- to contain large integers. That's bound
> > to run into problems sooner or later, but not with the example values
> > given here.
> >
> > .  clear
> >
> > .  set obs 3
> > obs was 0, now 3
> >
> > .  gen var1=.
> > (3 missing values generated)
> >
> > .  replace var1=121312 if _n==1
> > (1 real change made)
> >
> > .  replace var1=121314 if _n==2
> > (1 real change made)
> >
> > .  replace var1=121313 if _n==3
> > (1 real change made)
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:36 AM, Anna Reimondos <areimondos@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > I am currently coding occupations of respondents in a survey to the
> > > Australian New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations
> > > (ANZSCO).
> > > A rather odd thing is happening where I am able to assign the ANZSCO
> > > code in some cases, but not others!
> > >
> > >
> > > For example in the code below there is no problem assigning the value
> > > 121312 to case 1, and no problem assigning the value 121314 to case 2.
> > > However for case 3 who I want to give the code 121313 the code returns
> > > an error message '121313 invalid name' r(198).
> > >
> > > clear
> > > set obs 3
> > > gen var1=.
> > > replace var1=121312 if _n==1
> > > replace var1=121314 if _n==2
> > >
> > > replace var1=121313 if _n==3  //Problem
> > >
> > > The problem is not just with 121313, but it also does not seem to like
> > > 254499, 323112 and 821311 among others.
> > > I don't understand what is happening!
> > >
> > > I am using Stata 12.1, but have also tried this in 11.2 and get the
> > > same error code.
> > *
> > *   For searches and help try:
> > *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> > *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> > *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
>
> --
>
>
>
> *
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*
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