String to Date--missing values

[Budu Gulo]

I am trying to generate a date variable from a string variable (AnnouncementDate). Unfortunately, my code generates missing values for some observations. Here is my code:

gen date2 = date(AnnouncementDate, "DMY")
format date2 %td

and data:

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str10 AnnouncementDate
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/12/2016"
" 1/13/1981"
" 1/13/1981"
" 1/13/1982"
" 1/13/1982"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1983"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
" 1/13/1984"
end

Thanks in advance.

[Nick Cox]

Those dates look MDY to me, not DMY. 1/12 could be either, but what tells the tale is 1/13, which can only be 13 January.

[Budu Gulo]

Sorry for posting a stupid question. The AnnouncementDate variable is in month-date-year format. So, the appropriate code would be

gen date2 = date(AnnouncementDate, "MDY")
format date2 %td