Re: st:how to delete anything in the bracket for a string variable

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

Many people call () brackets, so it don't think it is widely
considered to be an error.

Nick

On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Amanda Fu <mandy.fu1@gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Tirthankar and Nick,
>
> Thank you both  for your help.  I learned how to deal with this task
> from your suggestions.
>
> Sorry that I confused () parentheses with [] brackets. Thanks to Nick
> for pointing this out.
>
> Best regards,
> Amanda Fu
>
> On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 3:27 AM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Tirthankar's kind of solution is much to be preferred, but there is no
>> reason to suppose that -substr()- does not work here
>>
>> In Amanda's examples, this should work:
>>
>> replace name = substr(name, 1, strpos(name, "(") - 1)
>>
>> This is not in one-to-one correspondence with Tirthankar's solution,
>> as it assumes that the important stuff comes first, and it also zaps
>> anything after the ")", but the solution is then just more
>> complicated, not impossible.
>>
>> Many people call () parentheses, sometimes round brackets; [] brackets
>> or square brackets, and {} braces or curly brackets.
>>
>> Either way, -trim()- is also useful here to remove any leading or
>> trailing spaces.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>> On Sun, Oct 9, 2011 at 6:05 AM, Tirthankar Chakravarty
>> <tirthankar.chakravarty@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This should work:
>>>
>>> ***********************************************
>>> clear*
>>> input id   str50     name
>>> 1         "John (joined before 2005)"
>>> 2         "Jenny"
>>> 3         "Kai (joined in 2006; left in 2008)"
>>> 4         "Tom (inconsistent dates)"
>>> end
>>> replace name = regexr(name, "\((.)+\)", "")
>>> li
>>> ***********************************************
>>>
>>> T
>>>
>>> On Sat, Oct 8, 2011 at 9:17 PM, Amanda Fu <mandy.fu1@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> I wonder if someone can give me some suggestion on delete anything in
>>>> the bracket for a string variable. A string variable in my data set
>>>> has some notes in bracket for part of the observations. I want to
>>>> remove the brackets and anything in them
>>>>
>>>> An example is like:
>>>> -------------------------
>>>> id        name
>>>> 1         John (joined before 2005)
>>>> 2         Jenny
>>>> 3         Kai (joined in 2006; left in 2008)
>>>> 4         Tom (inconsistent dates)
>>>> -------------------------.......
>>>> I would like to delete anything in the () for the variable "name" so
>>>> that only names are kept. But the content in the brackets are not the
>>>> same. I think that causes the -substr- does not work for this purpose.

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