Re: st: RE: The last four digits

[Ernest Berkhout <ernestb@seo.fee.uva.nl>]

At 01:41 9-12-2003, Daniel R Sabath wrote:
> I just wrote some code for this for someone else, so it's fresh on the
> brain.
>
>
> /* assumes nacimi is numeric and of fixed length */
> gen nacimi-1  = real(substr(string(nacimi),1,4))
> gen nacimi-2  = real(substr(string(nacimi),-4,4))
That is not a completely foolproof solution, as I don't think that the 
default behaviour for float-variables will be to display leading zero's. 
The second line is sufficient to extract the 4 last digits, as was the 
problem at hand.
But to elaborate a bit on this, if the objective would be to split 
something like the following variable:

 1041974
 1051973
17041975

where you want the last 4 digits in a variable "year" and the remaining 
part in a variable "date" an alternative to the substr-string-approach is 
as follows:

gen date = int(nacimi/10000)
gen year = mod(nacimi/10000)

There is no restriction as to how many digits there are before the last 4 
digits.


Ernest Berkhout
SEO Amsterdam Economics
University of Amsterdam

Room 3.08
Roetersstraat 29
1018 WB Amsterdam
The Netherlands

tel.:+ 31 20 525 1657
fax:+ 31 20 525 1686
http://www.seo.nl
===========================
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