st: RE: splitting strings

[Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk>]

What a nice question. I'm credited as the original author of -split-, following earlier joint work with Michael Blasnik, and I don't think I thought of this rather natural question when writing it. 

I checked to see whether I had solved it by accident and I hadn't. Whatever you specify as argument to -parse()- is taken literally and not checked to see if it is a variable name. 

However, there is a work-around. 

clonevar V1_2 = V1
replace V1_2 = subinstr(V1_2, V2, "&", .)
split V1_2, parse(&) 

The essential is to use as new separator -- "&" in the example -- something that does not otherwise occur. You can test any potential separator by e.g. 

assert strpos(V1, "&") == 0 

Nick 
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk 

Daniel Henriksen

I have a question regarding splitting up strings.
 Is it possible to split up a string using a string from another
variable defined in the same observation. I'm thinking of using the
"split" command.
Here's an example, where V1 is the string I'd like to split and V2 is
where I'd like to split (different from each observation). V1_1 and
V1_2 are the results of the splitting
V1                                              V2
V1_1          V1_2
hello John Smith how are you?      John Smith     hello           how are you?
I'm fine Jane, how about you         Jane,              I'm fine
how about you?


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