A nice feature of the manager, however, is that it generates the stata commands needed to accomplish the changes, so it can be used as a learning tool and, as long as you are logging the session, leaves a record behind. Reshaping data from wide to long university of virginia. How to convert string to float in java and viceversa. Stata will ignore this character and convert it to missing value. Wherever possible, this changes float variables to long by issuing recast long.
I have a csv file with a field called activity that is stored as long in stata. While useful for a human eye, a computer cant glean much from data in this format. You can now use stata s string variables to hold exceedingly long strings, even the contents of files or even binary files. Extracting and reshaping world fertility survey data in stata. Normally, id fire up a text editor and deconstruct the file, except stata saves its data in a proprietary binary format, meaning it garbles some of the content of the file. In a recent problem for me, that isolated one fixable string in one of about 600,000 observations, for which looking through the dataset was unattractive. How to convert numeric date to stata date stataprofessor. Even though stata can handly string variables, it is clear in many respects that numeric variables are much preferred. Files of the type dta or files with the file extension.
If you wrote a script to perform an analysis in 1985, that same script will still run and still produce the same results today. If the first argument is a string, then all the remaining arguments must be string also. You could specify appends force option to ignore this string numeric mismatch. Thank you very much for the quick reply and is very much helpful in converting the numeric variable to string variable. It provides a wide range of statistical analysis, data management, and graphics. The number of elements in each list must be the same. Jun 03, 2011 i recently found myself in the unpleasant situation of needing to read a stata. How can i quickly convert many string variables to numeric variables.
Stata module to recast variables from float to long storage type, statistical software components s444903, boston college department of economics, revised 21 oct 2004. The type of the string variable is determined automatically. Typing in data, changing variable names, adding labels, and adding values duration. It also performs date adjustments and reformatting during data transfer. The stata command destring and encode could be used to convert string variables to numeric variables. There are no observations because regress, along with most of statas analytic commands, cannot deal with string. However, anticipating that this may be problematic, stata offers various commands to change string variables into categorical variables and vice versa. The world development indicators is a commonly used dataset for macro level data. To convert numeric variables with a string numbers in red format into.
You can only tell the type of a variable by using the describe command. How do we convert these variables to numeric as destring returns an error. In stata this is often true because stata treats string encoded variables as missing and will not use them in analyses. To be able to perform any mathematical operations, your variables need to be in a numeric format. Package to read and write all stata file formats version 15 and older into a r. Usually, when we import data manually into the stata editor, the dates. There are three ways to convert a string to float primitive in java parsefloat, valueof method of float class and new float constructor. How to convert data types in oracle sql database star. 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. I want to take this field and split it into 3 new variables activity1, activity2, activity3each with length3 so the data will look something like this. How to extract few letters of a string variable in stata. 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. You can perform a similar function using a timestamp.
Often the first task is to convert the data youve been given into official stata dates. Say we have data on 500 patients stored in our stata dataset patients. Reed college stata help changing string variables to. To convert string variables into numerical variables by.
Often when importing data, stata can mistake a numeric variable for a string variable. In this case, you want to convert the actual variable, not the format type see here. For the love of physics walter lewin may 16, 2011 duration. The default format for the data download from wdi is very inconvenient for panel data analysis. Stata datasets are rectangular arrays with n observations on m variables. 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. In case you are using the map with out generic, then you need to convert the value into string and then try to convert to long. In spss version 25, the default format chosen is based on 95% of the cases. Once you have read this post, then you can read another post that lists a quick table of dates conversions from one frequency to another. This paper introduces a stata command that facilitates access to wfs data, with a userfriendly syntax that allows one to view the documentation, extract a set of variables from a survey, reshape the union or birth histories from wide to long format or vice versa, and make local copies of the data and dictionary files, although users also have.
Quick table for converting different dates to stata format. Home online help statistical packages stata reshape world development indicators for stata analysis. A pdf printer is a virtual printer which you can use like any other printer. May 05, 2015 this will convert the string value to a date. Cross sectional units in my panel data set are currently identified by names string variables. If a type is specified, the result returned by exp must be string or numeric according to whether type is string or numeric. But you dont need to convert to a string, the cout object knows how to handle longs so you can just. In the following table, the first column shows different date formats in which the date is already recorded and brought into stata. A string can contain multiple parts of information. What you need to convert a dta file to a pdf file or how you can create a pdf version from your dta file. Dec, 2018 stata command to download data from the wid. The date function takes two arguments, the string to be converted, and a. Spss does not support direct import of datasets in recent stata formats. The default download settings indicate missing values with two periods, like so.
On the lower left side in the variables window you will see the selected variables red arrow. Before we can use the stata timeseries or paneldata capabilities, we need to convert the string date to a stata date. Preserving numerical format after string transformation. We want to preserve the original gvkey, so we tell stata to create a separate variable that contains the exact same values of gvkey for every single case in our dataset, just with a different variable type. All these columns will import as string values when they should be numeric.
Suppose you have string which represents a floating point number e. Fortunately, stata offers some easy ways for converting string to numeric variables and vice versa. To convert them into a stata date, an example code is shown in the second column. Reshape world development indicators for panel data analysis. Dear all, when i am using the command tostring to convert numerical variable to string variable i am getting an error. Often data is imported into stata with string format dates such as 10091986 or 9oct1986. How can i turn a string variable containing dates into a date. And, like the pythagorean theorem proofs, there are the very long ones, the shorter ones, and the one that is the most elegant of all. Converting string variable to double or viceversa statalist. In each case we assume youre starting with a csv file called dat. In this post, i would like to show how to convert a numeric date to stata date. If idx is not a null pointer, the function also sets the value of idx to the position of the first character in str after the number. What command can i use to select variables containing.
The text weight calories indicates the variables to be converted, and iid tells stata that id is the identifier you can have more than one. You could specify appends force option to ignore this stringnumeric mismatch. In this post, i will provide a brief tour of working with dates that will help you get started using all of statas tools. Stata is a complete, integrated statistical software package created by statacorp lp. Dss reshape world development indicators for stata analysis. A very basic question i would appreciate help with.
Converting country codes in stata and r one of the most frequent hassles, when building up a new dataset and cleaning up the data prior to an analysis, is that different sources use different codes and notations for country names. We are starting with the worksheet initial download. Below we give basic demonstrations using r, sas, spss and stata to perform the reshaping demonstrated above. If the variable is actually a numeric value that just happens to be stored as a string, see our faq. Destring command suppose we want to convert the variable gvkey a string variable into a numerical variable. Converting numeric into string using the value labels. Sep, 2016 for the love of physics walter lewin may 16, 2011 duration. Converting country codes in stata and r irina mirkina.
Install ssc install traveltime3 traveltime3 requires insheetjson, which in turn requires libjson. But stata records missing values as a single period. So, i tried using the force option but then stata replaces part of the code by missing values. So, there are a few ways to convert between data types. How can i convert string variables to numeric variables in. From string to stata format this blog post discusses the conversion of text into stata date. This data layout is called wide data, but you want your data to be long. And if converting any numeric variable to string would result in loss of. This article is part of the stata for students series. Long is a pod type not a class so it has no methods.
Its identical to the wide format data displayed above. I recently found myself in the unpleasant situation of needing to read a stata. How can i quickly convert many string variables to numeric. 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. The first case most often occurs when importing data from another source. Stata can store numbers with differing levels of precision, as described in the table below. Convert string to long int parses str interpreting its content as an integral number of the specified base, which is returned as a value of type long int. I want to make an integer variable out of it such that it has a new ascending value for each new unit. Stata requires the variables over which we perform the reshape command to be numbers rather than string. How can i convert a string variable to a double or viceversa. Wordstat for stata content analysis and text mining tool. Description of basic syntax wide and long data forms. The easiest way to convert string variables to numeric form is to use the encode command.
Reshaping data from wide to long posted on sunday, july 21st, 20 at 4. You wont be able to convert it directly to long because of the decimal point i think you should convert it into decimal and then convert it into long something like this. You can have dates in years, months, or even milliseconds. We will download real data in their original formats and we will proceed from there. Stata is the only statistical package with integrated versioning. X3 reshaping data often particularly with panel data it is. Feel free to download the file and try the code below. In stata this is often true because stata treats stringencoded variables as missing and will not use them in analyses. Destring wouldnt work with stata as it said that the variable contained non numeric values which it didnt but i managed to destring the variable. This is why im requesting help to convert string to long instead of int this is a limit of atmega based core on the arduino uno and other atmega based boards an. You can now use statas string variables to hold exceedingly long strings, even the contents of files or even binary files. If you are new to stata we strongly recommend reading all the articles in the stata basics section. We have doctor notes stored in 500 other files with names like, and so on.
Values not defined by the mapping are generated as missing. In spss versions 24 and earlier, the default format chosen for a given variable is based on the values present in the first 200 records. There may be times that you receive a file that has many or all of the variables defined as strings, that is. If youve been given a date in string form, such as november 3, 2010, 12010 or 20101103 08. Stata has a wide array of tools to work with dates. If you have a string variable and want to convert it to a numeric variable. Converting string date variables to numeric statalist. What command can i use to select variables containing specific pattern in stata. The using variable would then be treated as if it contained.
If instead you want to import spss data to stata, then you need the usespss program. Not least, most statistical procedures just do not accept string variables. This is intended as a companion to compress, but the emphasis is on the appropriateness of the type rather than the storage space. The first line of syntax reads in the dataset shown above. Stata can record your work in a log le which contains what you type and what stata produce in response in a smcl le. More specific, how to convert firmlevel data from the world bank enterprise survey. When stata does this, the number will look right when you browse, but attempts to run commands will turn up zero observations. Therefore, stata offers tools to turn these date strings into values that, while still displaying sensical data to humans, are encoded in a numeric format that stata likes. Say that we have date variable in the following format and we want to convert it to stata format. In the above code, long tells stata that you want to restructure data from wide format to long format.
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