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Re: st: Removing quotation marks in string variables
From
Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject
Re: st: Removing quotation marks in string variables
Date
Fri, 5 Jul 2013 18:40:46 +0100
What I recommend
1. Replace instances of
","
with
" "
i.e. replace the commas between fields with spaces, leaving commas
within fields untouched.
A pattern here is
. gen FOO = subinstr(foo, char(34) + "," + char(34), char(34) + " " +
char(34), .)
2. Extract what is left as "words" of the string. See the functions
-wordcount()- and word()-, noting Stata's rule that " " bind harder
than spaces separate, i.e. "Stata rules OK", "Queen rules UK" are
words to Stata.
Nick
[email protected]
On 5 July 2013 18:24, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> The logic is this.
>
> 1. You want to look for " as a literal character, not a delimiter.
>
> 2. Therefore compound double quotes `" "' must be used as delimiters.
>
> replace tags = subinstr(tags, `"""', "", .)
>
> The awkward argument is
>
> `" left compound double quote
> " double quote to be taken literally
> "' right compound double quote
>
> A trick to avoid all this is to note that " is char(34) [see
> -asciiplot- from SSC for a cheat sheet] so that
>
> replace tags = subinstr(tags, char(34), "", .)
>
> But hang on: "Jackson, Collin" is recognisably one field: if you strip
> the " you will lose that. So, this may not be your best strategy.
>
> Note also -split-.
>
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
>
> On 5 July 2013 17:57, John Adam Roberts <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a dataset that is full of strings that look like this:
>>
>> ATUS00001213, "ATUS00001256","Jackson,Collin"
>>
>> I'm going to separate these values into different variables and I'm
>> wondering how to remove the "s from the dataset.
>>
>> For other characters, like commas, I would use the following command:
>> replace tags = subinstr(tags,",","",.)
>>
>> but
>> replace tags = subinstr(tags,""","",.)
>> replace tags = subinstr(tags,'"',"",.)
>> replace tags = subinstr(tags,""",.,.)
>> replace tags = subinstr(tags,'"',.,.)
>> don't work.
>>
>> Thanks in advance for the help!
>>
>> -Adam
>> *
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*
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