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From | Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> |
To | "statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu" <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu> |
Subject | Re: st: variable name with special character |
Date | Mon, 10 Feb 2014 20:58:16 +0000 |
-renvars- is from SJ. Interesting that there is still life in the old horse, even with the spectacular extension of -rename- in Stata 12. Nick njcoxstata@gmail.com On 10 February 2014 20:52, Jeph Herrin <info@flyingbuttress.net> wrote: > Thanks, that did the trick. It was char(160), of course, so > > . renvars _all, substr("`=char(160)'" "") > > did the trick. Interestingly, Stata even allowed things like: > > . d q_71a* > > > storage display value > variable name type format label variable label > -------------------------------------------------------------- > q_71a byte %10.0g > q_71a str63 %63s > > > cheers, > Jeph > > > > On 2/10/2014 3:39 PM, Nick Cox wrote: >> >> If you can get Stata to tell you what the character(s) is/are, you are >> home and dry. >> >> So, something like >> >> foreach v of var * { >> mata : st_local("chars", invtokens(strofreal(ascii("`v'")))) >> di "`v'" "{col 20}" "`chars'" >> } >> >> This is how it works for auto.dta >> >> make 109 97 107 101 >> price 112 114 105 99 101 >> mpg 109 112 103 >> rep78 114 101 112 55 56 >> headroom 104 101 97 100 114 111 111 109 >> trunk 116 114 117 110 107 >> weight 119 101 105 103 104 116 >> length 108 101 110 103 116 104 >> turn 116 117 114 110 >> displacement 100 105 115 112 108 97 99 101 109 101 110 116 >> gear_ratio 103 101 97 114 95 114 97 116 105 111 >> foreign 102 111 114 101 105 103 110 >> >> In your case, feeding A3* rather than * should be sufficient, and >> you'll want to look for high values at the end of each string. >> >> Nick >> njcoxstata@gmail.com >> >> >> On 10 February 2014 20:22, Jeph Herrin <info@flyingbuttress.net> wrote: >>> >>> >>> All, >>> >>> I used Stat/Transfer v12 to create a Stata dataset from an Excel file. >>> When >>> I open the file in Stata, I find that many of the variable names have >>> special characters (apparently), because Stata can't see them. Example: >>> >>> >>> . d A3* >>> >>> storage display value >>> variable name type format label variable label >>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >>> A3 str2 %2s >>> A3a str2 %2s >>> A3b str2 %2s >>> A3c_1 str2 %2s >>> A3c_2 str2 %2s >>> A3c_3 str2 %2s >>> A3c_4 str2 %2s >>> A3c_5 str2 %2s >>> A3c_6 str2 %2s >>> A3c_7 str2 %2s >>> >>> >>> . d A3 >>> A3 ambiguous abbreviation >>> r(111); >>> >>> So there seems to be a non-printing character trailing -A3-; I have >>> dozens >>> of these in the dataset. In the original excel file, all seems to be in >>> order. There are trailing blanks in the top row; however, >>> >>> . renvars _all, postsub(" " "") >>> no renames necessary >>> >>> Any thoughts on how I can identify and repair the problem with these >>> variable names? >>> >>> thanks, >>> Jeph >>> >>> >>> >>> * >>> * For searches and help try: >>> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search >>> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ >>> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ >> >> * >> * For searches and help try: >> * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search >> * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ >> * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ >> > * > * For searches and help try: > * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search > * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ > * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/ * * For searches and help try: * http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search * http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/ * http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/