How to convert quarterly string date to Stata date

[Attaullah Shah]

I have dates in the following format, want to convert it to Stata dates, is there any function for this type of dates

clear
input str7 q
"1955 Q2" 
"1955 Q3" 
"1955 Q4" 
"1956 Q1" 
"1956 Q2" 
"1956 Q3" 
"1956 Q4" 
"1957 Q1" 
"1957 Q2" 
"1957 Q3" 
end

[Nick Cox]

Thanks for the clear example. quarterly() will work fine here. Documented under help datetime.

. clear

. input str7 q

             q
  1. "1955 Q2"
  2. "1955 Q3"
  3. "1955 Q4"
  4. "1956 Q1"
  5. "1956 Q2"
  6. "1956 Q3"
  7. "1956 Q4"
  8. "1957 Q1"
  9. "1957 Q2"
 10. "1957 Q3"
 11. end

.
. gen qdate = quarterly(q, "YQ")

. format qdate %tq

. list

     +------------------+
     |       q    qdate |
     |------------------|
  1. | 1955 Q2   1955q2 |
  2. | 1955 Q3   1955q3 |
  3. | 1955 Q4   1955q4 |
  4. | 1956 Q1   1956q1 |
  5. | 1956 Q2   1956q2 |
     |------------------|
  6. | 1956 Q3   1956q3 |
  7. | 1956 Q4   1956q4 |
  8. | 1957 Q1   1957q1 |
  9. | 1957 Q2   1957q2 |
 10. | 1957 Q3   1957q3 |
     +------------------+

[Attaullah Shah]

Thanks for your reply and solution. The clear example is a product of yours and Robert dataex program.

[Nick Cox]

It did seem that way....

[Upamanyu Lahiri]

I have a related question. I am using quarterly data for synthetic control and am unable to display the quarters in the graph I am generating HRFs. It is instead displaying in SIF. My current code for the graphs is the following:

synth ratio_prev $covars, trunit(34) trperiod(233) xperiod(203(1)232) nested allopt fig

Any help is appreciated.