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Re: st: -destring- and missing values
From
Nick Cox <[email protected]>
To
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject
Re: st: -destring- and missing values
Date
Wed, 2 Oct 2013 17:14:32 +0100
I'd check for non-standard characters that can't be printed, e.g.
using -charlist- (SSC).
I agree with the principle that -destring- should ignore spaces.
Nick
[email protected]
On 2 October 2013 17:07, Jeph Herrin <[email protected]> wrote:
> All,
>
> I have hundreds of variables that look like this:
>
> . d q1
>
> storage display value
> variable name type format label variable label
> -------------------------------------------------------------
> q1 str2 %2s
>
> . tab q1, m
>
> q1 | Freq. Percent Cum.
> ------------+-----------------------------------
> | 2 0.89 0.89
> 1 | 216 96.00 96.89
> 2 | 7 3.11 100.00
> ------------+-----------------------------------
> Total | 225 100.00
>
> but when I try to use -destring-
>
> . destring q1, replace
> q1 contains nonnumeric characters; no replace
>
> According to the documentation,
>
> destring treats both empty strings "" and "." as indicating sysmiss
> (.)...
> destring also ignores any leading or trailing spaces so that, for
> example,
> " " is equivalent to "" and " . " is equivalent to ".".
>
> Why is -destring- not converting my variables to numeric? I think I must be
> missing something very obvious.
>
> I can get around this by
>
> replace q1 = "." if mi(q1)
>
> but I don't think I should have to.
>
>
> J
>
>
>
>
>
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