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st: About mismatches in merge


From   "Ivar Pettersen" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   st: About mismatches in merge
Date   Wed, 31 Mar 2004 00:07:12 +0200

Stata-users

I have been merging some files lately and discovered that _merge_ 
fails to match observations when the key-variables have different 
precision.

If the key variable is measured as long in one file and float in the 
other, most of my valid matches fail. _merge_ does tell me that the 
key variable has been recast to a double, but I do feel that _merge_ 
should warn the user of potential false mismatches due to different 
precision. If I make sure the key is stored as long in both files the 
matches are correct.

I should mention that the key-variable I am using is a 9-digit 
integer. I feel that this behaviour may be linked to the scale of the 
key-variable.

Am I missing something here?

Using Stata 8 on Win XP.

Sincerely,
Ivar Pettersen
Research fellow
Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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