Re: st: Re: hours:minutes:seconds

[Gary Longton <glongton@fhcrc.org>]

Christa Scholtz wrote:

> I have a data field where the duration of an event is recorded in this
> format:
>
> hour:minute:second
>
>  eg:  an event that lasts 5 hours, 27 minutes and 13 seconds is 5:27:13.
>
> How do I get Stata to convert this into total number of seconds?

and Radu Ban replied:

> you can try sth like:
> if your_time is the variable you have for time
>
> gen str8 stime = your_time
> gen shours = substr(stime, 1, 2) *takes the first two digits
> gen hours = real(shour) *reads first two digits as number
> gen sminutes = substr(stime, 4, 2) *takes digits 4 and 5
> gen minutes = real(sminutes)
> gen sseconds = substr(stime, 7, 2)
> gen seconds = real(sseconds)
>
> *now add up
> gen totsecs = 3600*hours + 60*minutes + seconds
Radu's approach assumes that the original time string will always have 
2-digit hours, which will often be too restrictive, and won't work for 
Christa's example.

An easier one-step approach for parsing the time string into the 3 
component numeric variables would be to use Nick Cox's -split- program 
(available on SSC), which could be followed with Radu's expression for 
total seconds.

- Gary


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