RE: st: Extracting substrings from variable and combining variables.

[Amal Khanolkar <Amal.Khanolkar@ki.se>]

Hi,

Originally, I started using the 'regex' command to extract ICD codes from my variables of interest shown below (mdiag1, mdiag2, mdiag3, mdiag4 etc....). I'm extracting the same ICD codes from all the mdiag variables starting with the numbers/letters: 637, 642 and O1. Initially I extracted the ICD codes from each mdiag variable separately with the idea of combining them at the end. But that seems a bit more complicated now. Maybe, one solution could be to extract all ICD codes from all mdiag variables at the same time. There are 12 such mdiag variables.

gen preght1 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag1, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght1
			
			gen preght2 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag2, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght2
			
			gen preght3 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag3, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght3
			
			gen preght4 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag4, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght4
			
			gen preght5 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag5, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght5
			
			gen preght6 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag6, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght6
			
			gen preght7 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag7, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght7
			
			gen preght8 = regexs(0) if regexm(mdiag8, "^(637|642|O1)")
			tab preght8  

The above generates 8 preght variables and works great.

Initially I tried to combine the (mdiagX, "^(637|642|O1) for each mdiag variable by enclosing them in separate brackets one after another. But it doesn't work. How do I modify the regexs/regexm commands to be able to tell Stata to pluck out the ICD codes for several variables in the same command line?

Thanks,
Amal.

________________________________________
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] on behalf of Nick Cox [n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk]
Sent: 01 June 2012 19:31
To: 'statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu'
Subject: RE: st: Extracting substrings from variable and combining variables.

There is a tutorial on -foreach- at

SJ-2-2  pr0005  . . . . . .  Speaking Stata:  How to face lists with fortitude
        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  N. J. Cox
        Q2/02   SJ 2(2):202--222                                 (no commands)
        demonstrates the usefulness of for, foreach, forvalues, and
        local macros for interactive (non programming) tasks

. search foreach

will get you to a clickable link.

If you want a composite variable, you can use -egen- and then modify the resulting variable with -replace- to get what you want. Or you can write your own code to get what you want. I don't know exactly what you want, so that rules out further suggestions from me for the time being. You would get better help by giving examples of what the variables you want would look like.

Nick
n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk

Amal Khanolkar

Thanks for the input and code:

I didn't really understand what the code does (''for each etc...'')
But it does pluck out the those that have the 3 diagnoses of interest and creates 3 separate variables as follows:

tab  has637

     has637 |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          0 |  2,969,464       99.26       99.26
          1 |     21,992        0.74      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |  2,991,456      100.00

. tab  has642

     has642 |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          0 |  2,948,590       98.57       98.57
          1 |     42,866        1.43      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |  2,991,456      100.00

. tab  hasO1

      hasO1 |      Freq.     Percent        Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
          0 |  2,968,084       99.22       99.22
          1 |     23,372        0.78      100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
      Total |  2,991,456      100.00

- The above also gives a lower number and skips those recorded as duplicates.


- I think using the replace command to restructure preght is probably easier: however you meant I do it before that is using the original 12 variables and skipping egen all together?


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