st: wildcard in numeric variable

[Colin Campbell <col.campbell@rocketmail.com>]

Dear Statalist,

I have a dataset in which a numeric variable cv contains values that need to be coded as missing.
There are a variety of numeric values 9999, 99999, 999999 etc that need to be recoded.
While I could replace each value individually, I wondered if there is a way to use wildcards with numeric variables such that e.g.


    replace numvar =. if numvar == 9999*

would work. I have a workaround using string variables as follows

    tostring cv, gen(cv_str)
    gen cv_mis = regexm(cv_str, "9999")
    replace cv =. if cv_mis ==1
    drop cv_mis cv_str

Is there a more elegant way to achieve this without resorting to strings?

Many thanks

Colin


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