convert strL to str#

[Meeryung La]

I tried to convert my key variable "name" from strL to str# to merge two datasets.
However, the error code r(109) continues to occur.
I've tried the following:

. describe name

storage display value
variable name type format label variable label
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
name strL %-20s Name of owning party <party-name>


. gen len=length(name)

. summ len

Variable | Obs Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
-------------+---------------------------------------------------------
len | 21,022,429 22.72522 9.84456 1 818

. recast str818 name, force
name: str818 invalid
r(109);



Also, I tried to compress command then I obtained

. compress name
(0 bytes saved)


Does anyone have an idea to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance

[Joseph Coveney]

I don't know why your code doesn't work, but maybe try

generate str name_string = name
replace name = ""
compress name
replace name = name_string
drop name_string
describe name

[Meeryung La]

Thank you for your answer! The recommended method failed due to a memory issues (cause my dataset contains 21,022,429 observations), instead I split the dataset in half and used recast command, and this time it worked without error.