Re: st: Quote Quote Unquote Unquote??

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

-subinstr()- is a function, not a command.

The problem here is that the double quote character -- I will assume
that you are not concerned with single quotes -- has two roles: it can
be a string delimiter and it can stand for a literal character. Also,
if you nest double quotes, the result will be  ambiguous. The solution
to both of these problems is to use a Stata invention, compound double
quotes, in which `"  (left single quote followed by double quote) is
an opening delimiter and "' (double quote followed by right single
quote) is a closing delimiter. In terms of what you type, these are
two characters each, but they are to be interpreted as composites,
just as == and <= and >= are two characters standing for single
entities.

You want

replace variable = subinstr( variable, `"""', " ",.)

Note that what you are describing is not removing double quote
characters, so much as replacing them with spaces. If you just want to
remove them, then

replace variable = subinstr( variable, `"""', "",.)

is clearly the alternative to use.

Nick

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 2:05 PM, miyu Lee <miyu.lee1@googlemail.com> wrote:

> I have a small issue regarding quotation marks:
>
> I want to remove all quote marks from my dataset, seems it doesnt work
> with the substring command.
>
> For example, "replace variable = subinstr( variable, """, " ",.)"
>
> (that is triple quotation marks) doesnt work, (rightly) saying "too few quotes"
>
> or: "replace variable = subinstr (variable, """", " ", .)" works -
> unfortunately removing everything within quotation marks.
>
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