Re: st: RE: Stata analog to Mata's -strdup()- or better approach?

[Rebecca Pope <rebecca.a.pope@gmail.com>]

Nick,
I had to read what you wrote a couple of times before the "Duh" kicked
in. In one of my many attempts, I did (nearly) exactly what you wrote
below. The real difference, which I didn't catch at first, is that you
don't condense the spaces into a single space like I did. -split- will
create a new variable for each " ", thereby preserving where the
string started. For subsequent instances of variables including Xs,
the index on the variable generated by -split- will be off, but I
could just add the length of the preceding variables. Brilliant! (you,
not me)

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm rather ashamed to admit that I
initially used -split- exactly as you do and cursed at it for not
recognizing multiple delimiters as one, went back and condensed the
multiple spaces to a single space, and then -split- the variable
again. In fact, my initial reaction to your e-mail was "Did that;
doesn't work." I suppose "obtuse" does apply. Sorry for the trouble.

Unless I'm missing something else, I could just use - split estring,
parse(-) -, correct?

Thanks again for all the help,
Rebecca

On Fri, Mar 11, 2011 at 6:32 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Have you thought of something like
>
> clonevar fstring = estring
> replace fstring = subinstr(fstring, "-", " ", .)
> split fstring
>
<truncated>
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