The following works if you have a small number of strings of interest. Introduction to stata imost commonly used software in applied microeconomic research iprovide a wide variety of statistical analyses and graphs i handle panel, time series, and clustered data ieasy to learn and use i intuitive syntax and language i a wealth of resources for learning. What do we want to call the variable which contains the suffix of ht, i. Useful stata commands 2019 rensselaer polytechnic institute.
Fore more information, see the help or reference manual about the destring and encode commands. Most commands in stata allow 1 a list of variables, 2 an ifstatement, and 3 options. Performs the rot encoding on the string argument and returns the resulting string. Is there another noninteractive command not necessarily in a python module that i can run. If you really want a string variable, you need decode, not tostring. Here we use the generate command to create a new variable representing population younger than 18 years old. See the official stata help for destring and stata help for encode. Simons, 1may11 44 which numbers correspond to which strings.
Compactly list variables with specified properties. It evaluates and prints the value of an expression of the language your program is written in see section using gdb with different languages. How can i quickly convert many string variables to numeric variables. I am trying to use the recommended python 3 approach to turn this string into a usable string that i can manipulate. Given knowledge of a locale and perhaps some optional instructions about whether. On the main stata window, click on variable manager to manage variables. A value label can easily be created in stata and attached to the variable you want to decode.
We have a string variable, sex, that records each persons sex as male and female. What is the stem of the variable going from wide to long. The minimum abbreviations are underlined in help and manuals e. Using the encode command in stata to create numerical indicator variables from text or string source variable. If you have a string variable that has only numbers in it, then you can alternatively use the real function. String variables, simply speaking, are variables that contain not just numbers. Data processing basic syntax with stata 15 cheat sheet by.
How to generate string variable from numeric variable statalist. The encode and decode commands in stata allow you to convert string variables to numeric variables encode and numeric variables to string variables decode. The encode command assigns a number to each different string, starting with the number 1 and continuing on 2, 3, 4, etc, while applying a value label to each number. The output string variable may either replace the input numeric variable or be generated as a new variable named newvar. In a case where your string variables are in fact strings e. This only works if your original string variable is spelled consistently. Oct 14, 2016 this post demonstrates how to create new variables, recode existing variables and label variables and values of variables. Epidemiology in practice data management using epidata and. If you are using an earlier version, you should say what it is.
The stata blog using dates and times from other software. The list command confirms that the data was read correctly. When working with daily rainfall data, i have often used a. Wordstat combines natural language processing, content analysis, and statistical techniques to quickly extract topics, patterns, and relationships in large amounts of. Jan 05, 2011 in any case, you are unlikely to encounter excel numerically coded dates. The syntax tostring would only work if tostring were a function, which is not. Convert string variables to numeric variables and vice versa. A dependent variable precedes a set of independent variables.
Stata uses some programming terminology in unique ways. By default the value of expr is printed in a format. Also, the merge occurs based on the id variable regardless of sort order. The str tells stata it is a string variable and that it could be up to characters wide. When you first open stata, you will see a screen that looks like this. A list of variables consists of the names of the variables, separated with spaces. Otherwise, you can use encode to convert string data into a numeric variable or decode.
With destring, you need to specify either the, generate option or the, replace option. Stata data file created has not lost information due to duplicate labels. Nov 23, 2007 with encode, you need to specify the, generate option and give it a new variable name. For example i type decode qwxhzgrpbjpvcgvuihnlc2ftzq and it prints aladdin. Stata s encode command creates a labeled numeric variable from a string variable. Example 3 we can drastically reduce the size of our dataset by encoding strings and then discarding the underlying string variable. Dec 17, 2015 for dates before 01 jan 1960, stata assigns negative numbers as the number of elapsed days.
X4 converting between strings and numbers use the describe. The opposite of encode is decode the decode command has the same syntax as the encode command, but generates a string variable based on the labels of a. If most or all of this is new to you, start with u 24 dealing with dates. Tab autocompletes variable name after typing part at command prompt ctrl 9 open a new. Decode for numeric variables statalist the stata forum. Running this command will cause stata to make a new numeric categorical variable wherein the data has labels that correspond to the old string values. It is a string, and stata automatically created the shortest possible string. Oct 08, 2017 the decode command will convert a numeric variable to a string variable when that variable has a value label attached to it. Decode string variable into numeric using formats for unlabelled values. Exploring data and descriptive statistics using stata.
Otherwise, you can use encode to convert string data into a numeric variable or decode to convert numeric variables to strings. If a variable has been read as a string but really contains numbers you will want to use the command destring or the function real. Sometimes you may need to convert between numeric and string variables. Wordstat for stata was created to allow stata and stata 16 users running under windows, to apply text analytics techniques on any string variables stored in a stata data file. The command will also create an additional variable merge.
The table is derived by outputting the values of these variables, preceded by a begin string option, separated by a delimiter string option, and su. A string variable shows up in red in the data editor. A, i would suggest using the substr function generate a new variable that contains the same string but. Black is for numbers, red is for text or string and blue is for labeled variables. Strings are ideally suited for id variables you can convert between numeric and string variables. The codebook command above shows that variable female has three types of missing values and 4 missing values. The egen command is useful for working across groups of variables or within groups of observations. You may need an alternate approach if you are searching for a larger number of strings, where writing out the ranges of strings e. The encode and decode commands in stata allow you to convert string variables to numeric variables encode and numeric variables to string. Example 4 we have a numeric variable named female that records the values 0 and 1. One method of converting numbers stored as strings into numerical variables is to use a string function called real that translates numeric values stored as strings into numeric values stata can recognize as such. Encoding and decoding are done by the same function, passing an encoded string as argument will return the original version.
I dont have access at the moment to the documentation for stata 6 that would be needed to answer how to do it using for, but if you are using stata 7 or later you should switch to foreach. It is a very complex command the help manual for this one command is 55 pages long, but extremely powerful. How do i convert a python 3 bytestring variable into a. For one thing, we have to do it one variable at a time. As of the writing of this manual, stata was available in at least some labs in sunderland, munroe, the library, and bihall. If for some reason you want to convert a numeric variable into a string variable, you may use the complementary function decode.
If you have a string variable that has only numbers in. Stata variables are all associated with a display format. Openingsaving a stata datafile quick way of finding variables subsetting using conditional if stata color coding system from spsssas to stata example of a dataset in excel from excel to stata copyandpaste. How can i recode missing values into different categories. A, i would suggest using the substr function generate a new variable that contains the same string but without the first letter and so it only contains numbers, then convert that string to numeric using destring and select observations using something like replace wanted 1 if inrange. How can i quickly convert many string variables to numeric. Wordstat for stata content analysis and text mining tool. Quick table for converting different dates to stata format. The encode command turns categorical string variables into encoded numeric variables, while its counterpart decode reverses this operation. Learn how to change string variables into numeric variables and numeric variables into string variables in stata. Thus suppose that you create new variables, for example. Type help gsw within stata and then link on a red gsw link to get the manual within stata. Note that while using list, and some other data display commands, produces values that look like string dates, the actual values stored by stata are numeric.
Fore more information, see the help or reference manual about the destring and encode co. The first line of syntax reads in the dataset shown above. If you use a conversion package, most know to convert the date for you. How can i turn a string variable containing dates into a date.
It is still a numeric variable var2 is a string variable even though you see numbers. We can create a real string variable from this numerically encoded variable by using decode decode female, gensex. Unlike decode, sdecode creates an output string variable containing the values of the input variable as output by the list command and other stata output, instead of decoding all unlabelled input values to missing. The easiest way to convert string variables to numeric form is to use the encode command. If you have a string variable and want to convert it to a numeric variable, you can use the encode command. Inputting your data into stata stata learning modules. Stata value labels pandas categories must be strings. Reshaping data wide to long stata learning modules. Method 1 may not be the best way of recoding missing values into different categories. I would like to write a bash script to decode a base64 string. For example, 31 dec 1959 is 1 days elapsed since 01 jan 1960. The rot encoding simply shifts every letter by places in the alphabet while leaving nonalpha characters untouched.
If a variable has been read as a string but really contains numbers you can use the command destring. If you cutandpaste the spreadsheet into stata s data editor, dates and datetimes paste as strings in humanreadable form. How to recode a byte variable to a string variable in stata. Epidemiology in practice data management using epidata and stata course manual this document contains the material which has been written to support teaching. Not surprisingly, stata requires the numeric variable to be labeled. The second command formats the numeric value so that when stata displays the date, it is in a form that is easy for humans to read. Users can assign such a display format or work with a display format assigned by default. Use of single time variables, let alone of tsset, is not compulsory in stata for all timeseries manipulations. The gsw manual referred to here getting started with stata is an alternative resource for learning stata to this one, more in depth in than this in some places, but not covering everything in this guide. What variable uniquely identifies an observation when it is in the wide form. Example 4 we have a numeric variable named female that records the values. You can only tell the type of a variable by using the describe command. The association between numbers and strings is achieved using what are called value labels.
If the variable is actually a numeric value that just happens to be stored as a string, see our faq. Then we will address the case where the string variables actually contain strings. The encode and decode commands stata sdas techtips. The usual way to examine data in your program is with the print command abbreviated p, or its synonym inspect. Stata is available for windows, unix, and mac computers. The original answer thus explained why the ops code was wrong, as well as explaining how to do it correctly. Since make is a character variable, we need to tell stata that it is a character variable, and how long it can be. These commands rely on value labels, which are described below. Stata has some utility commands for creating new variables.
896 1220 1037 416 431 1123 360 1156 636 175 1650 1355 1142 1648 1136 1622 1515 795 2 1041 576 1157 651 1486 750 289