jockmcdock wrote:
Recently, a poster posted a question about converting a long string which
contained "numeric" data to numeric. I recently had the same problem and
eventually solved it. While trying to solve my problem, I looked at inputting
large integers and came across the following
. set obs 1
. gen x=1234567890
. format x %15.0g
. list
+------------+
| x |
|------------|
1. | 1234567936 |
+------------+
Is there some limit on the size of integers (answer: of course there is) but
why doesn't Stata give me some sort of warning message?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-help datatypes- will give you the limits on the various floating-point and
integer representations of numbers in Stata. It also describes the default
storage type for numeric (float) for -generate- and states its accuracy (about
7 digits), which is the warning that you need about this, if the result of
-list- with the default display format isn't enough (1.23e+09). The User's
Guide [U] and Reference [R] manuals are also good resources for these kinds of
matters. You can change the default for -generate- by -set type double-, which
will overcome the problem in this particular example. (See -help generate-.)
Joseph Coveney
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