st: date conversion

[Christopher F Baum <baum@bc.edu>]

Erica wrote
I have a date variable which lists dates as

MM-DD-YR

I want to remove the hyphens/dashes, but can't find anything in any
manual about this.

Also, sometimes the actual time is also included like:

MM-DD-YR HH:MM.

In this case, I want to dump the time stamp, and keep the date (without
the hyphens).


For the first problem, assuming var1 contains dates in that MM-DD-YR 
format,

. g v2=date(var1,"mdy",2020)


     +------------------+
     |     var1      v2 |
     |------------------|
  1. | 02-11-78    6616 |
  2. | 09-11-01   15229 |
  3. | 08-13-51   -3063 |
  4. | 07-15-04   16267 |
     +------------------+

format v2 %td

     +----------------------+
     |     var1          v2 |
     |----------------------|
  1. | 02-11-78   11feb1978 |
  2. | 09-11-01   11sep2001 |
  3. | 08-13-51   13aug1951 |
  4. | 07-15-04   15jul2004 |
     +----------------------+

For the second problem,

. g v4=date(substr(var3,1,9),"mdy",2020)
. format v4 %td

will drop the timestamp and return

     +---------------------------------------------------+
     |     var1          v2             var3          v4 |
     |---------------------------------------------------|
  1. | 02-11-78   11feb1978   02-11-78 12:00   11feb1978 |
  2. | 09-11-01   11sep2001   09-11-01 08:46   11sep2001 |
  3. | 08-13-51   13aug1951   08-13-51 06:20   13aug1951 |
  4. | 07-15-04   15jul2004   07-15-04 20:53   15jul2004 |
     +---------------------------------------------------+

Kit

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