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RE: st: trim spaces in postcode


From   "Nick Cox" <[email protected]>
To   <[email protected]>
Subject   RE: st: trim spaces in postcode
Date   Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:36:31 +0100

A quibble on the side: 

As it happens I guess no British postcode
is longer than 8 characters, but in 
general this is dangerous, with greater
and lesser dangers. 

Forget postcodes, and consider the possible
consequences of stipulating -str8-. 

If I say 

gen str8 whatever = "abcdefghi" 

Stata assumes I mean what I say 
and that I trust it to do the best 
it can. 

The consequence will be "abcdefgh" 
everywhere, and no warning message. 
The greater danger is thus loss of data. 

If I say 

gen str8 whatever = "foo" 

the consequence is "foo" everywhere
and some wasted storage. That may be
trivial to you, but it is still avoidable.

I guess Emma has been using Stata for 
a while and started when you _had_ to 
specify a string type in generating 
a string variable. For a few versions
past, that has no longer been compulsory.
It is best, in fact, not to do it, as 
Stata is smarter at computing than you 
are. 

If I say 

gen something = "foo" 

-something- will be born -str3-. 

Nick 
[email protected] 

Maurizio Gibin
 
> Thank you Emma...
> Easy and it's working!
 
Emma.Slaymaker

> gen str8 newvar=subinstr(oldvar," ","",.)
> 
> if oldvar is your current postcode variable and newvar is a new one.

Maurizio.Gibin

> I am trying to trim all the spaces in a code, in particular an english
> unit postcode
> but I still haven't found the correct way. I downloaded the ptseed
> strip function but seems is not working.
> Can anyone please help me? The database I am working on is quite
> huge...

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