Re: st: more than double precision (higher than 16 digit)

["Michael N. Mitchell" <Michael.Norman.Mitchell@gmail.com>]

Dear Nicola

  I wonder if you might make a new id variable based on the string variable like this...

sysuse auto
egen id = group(make)

  Then you could use the new id variable for the program that requires the numeric id 
variable.
I hope that helps,

Michael N. Mitchell
Data Management Using Stata      - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/dmus.html
A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics - http://www.stata.com/bookstore/vgsg.html
Stata tidbit of the week         - http://www.MichaelNormanMitchell.com



On 2010-11-28 4.27 PM, Nicola Man wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am having problems with precision for a numeric variable (it is an ID variable).  I have been keeping it as a string variable as there are more than 16 digits (the maximum number of exact digits stored in double precision, which problem I also encountered in other softwares like Excel and SPSS).
>
> However, I now want to do some computation with a user-written program in STATA that needs it to be stored as a number.  Would be great if someone would help me with this.
>
> Thanks!
> Nicola
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