Thanks to Kit Baum, the -charlist- program
posted and discussed earlier today is now
available from SSC. The output and syntax are changed
from my original posting.
In an up-to-date Stata, type
. ssc desc charlist
and if desired
. ssc inst charlist
For explanation of the -ssc- command,
please see the first URL under my signature.
Briefly, -charlist- shows which characters
are present in a string variable.
Here is a concocted example of one way
in which it might be useful.
Stata tells you that something which should be numeric
is string, and -destring- won't play:
. destring mystuff, replace
mystuff contains non-numeric characters; no replace
So you ask for a report:
. charlist mystuff
123I
We see that "I" characters are present.
Perhaps whoever typed in the data was
distracted, or the OCR software made a mistake,
so some "1" (one) characters have been entered
as "I" (capital I).
. l mystuff if index(mystuff,"I")
mystuff
12. I23
57. I23
73. I23
You decide on appropriate surgery:
. replace mystuff = subinstr(mystuff,"I", "1",.)
(3 real changes made)
. destring mystuff, replace
mystuff has all characters numeric; replaced as byte
Of course, there are other ways to do
this -- and also other examples in which
-charlist- may be useful.
Nick
[email protected]
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
