Variable values within Brackets

[rena jk]

Hi,
I am trying to generate a new variable call (ID_new) as shown below, from an existing variable in my data set called (ID_orginal). where my new (ID_new) is to be the exact same of the old variable value except that its values are contained between two square Brackets [as shown in bold], and combined with the (ID_1) variable value.

Here is an example of my data, I created this part manually in excel but could not figure how to do it in stata to run it for my entire data set:

ID_1	ID_orginal	ID_new
31010011	2	31010011[2]
11020051	7	11020051[7]
81030016	1	81030016[1]
19040016	2	19040016[2]

thank you

[Nick Cox]

You could use egen, concat() or make up your own concatenation. By and large, the new variable needs to be string.

[rena jk]

You could use egen, concat() or make up your own concatenation. By and large, the new variable needs to be string.

Thank you Nick, appreciate your guidiance it worked