Re: st: date conversion

[Muhammad Anees <aneesmkhattak@gmail.com>]

Thanks Nick, I have already done that as per your suggest help files.

On 27 May 2011 14:57, Nick Cox <n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Thanks for this. You can now
>
> . format date %td
>
> Alternatively, use any other congenial format.
>
> Nick
> n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk
>
> Muhammad Anees
>
> Thank Nick and Maarten!
>
> Nick! I have silently read many of your posts and came to the same
> conclusion that I should have read help files before taking times of
> other experts but you know one misses things unintentionally as I did
> in this very basic data manipulation. I am grateful to you always for
> your constructive guidance adding always to my knowledge of using
> Stata.
>
> I did the following and came with the new date variable which is now a
> numeric serries but having missing entries for the missing dates which
> I can use equally as my day variable. The resultant and original dates
> are now after changing the format of day variable in Excel which I
> think can be done in Stata.
>
> . generate date = date(day, "MDY")
> . li day date in 1/10
>
>     +---------------------------+
>     |               day    date |
>     |---------------------------|
>  1. | December 31, 2010   18627 |
>  2. | December 30, 2010   18626 |
>  3. | December 29, 2010   18625 |
>  4. | December 28, 2010   18624 |
>  5. | December 27, 2010   18623 |
>  6. | December 24, 2010   18620 |
>  7. | December 23, 2010   18619 |
>  8. | December 22, 2010   18618 |
>  9. | December 21, 2010   18617 |
>  10. | December 20, 2010   18616 |
>     +---------------------------+
>
> I have the desired results in further analysis which became possible
> after this conversion only. Thank you very much Nick and Maarten and
> hope to have your guidance.
>
>
> On 27 May 2011 13:34, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
>> You need to get in the habit of using the help to sort out well
>> documented issues like these.
>>
>> 1. -tsset- requires numeric variables. If you tried to -tsset- with a
>> string variable, that won't work and you will have received an error
>> message to that effect.
>>
>> 2. -encode- just maps string variables to integers 1 up and as you say
>> throws away the specific date information except insofar as it is
>> recorded in value labels.
>>
>> 3. Conversion of dates in string form can be achieved using the
>> -date()- function; see -help dates_and_times-.  Your example is
>> ambiguous as between MDY and DMY, but one of
>>
>> gen ndate = date(date, "MDY")
>>
>> and
>>
>> gen ndate = date(date, "DMY")
>>
>> will be the answer in Stata 11. (In Stata 10, and earlier, arguments
>> would "mdy" or "dmy". )
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 4:40 AM, Muhammad Anees <aneesmkhattak@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Sorry to post might be not in the right place but my question somehow
>>> related to the conversion of dates too. I have date in the format
>>> 1/1/2008 and it is in the string format. When I tsset my data using
>>> the string variable it is not working as usual. Now I have encoded my
>>> date variable using encode date, gen(day) which generates new day
>>> variables but when I explore the data all the day variable has been
>>> re-ordered and what reasons works behind it. Also how can I expect to
>>> have to have both date and day side by side and no ordering to occure
>>> when I convert date to day or otherwise.
>
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>



-- 
---
Best,


---------------
Anees

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