Convert clock data type to daily

[Madu Abuchi]

Hi Statalisters,

I have had issues with converting a date variable which was imported from database in clock data type into daily. Here is a sample of the data:

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input double year_of_birth
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9039428e+12
1.9066212e+12
1.9066212e+12
1.9066212e+12
end
format %tc year_of_birth

I have tried with

format %td year_of_birth
list

But the data changes to numbers

    year_o~h    
        
1.    1.90e+12    
2.    1.90e+12    
3.    1.90e+12    
4.    1.90e+12    
5.    1.90e+12    
        
6.    1.90e+12    
7.    1.90e+12    
8.    1.91e+12    
9.    1.91e+12    
10.    1.91e+12

Any suggestions to get the time variable into daily (YMD) will be appreciated

Madu

[Rich Goldstein]

my guess is that you want the "dofc(tc)" function; see

help datetime##s6

[Madu Abuchi]

Thanks Rich for your suggestion, which worked.

The solution is:

gen dob = dofc( year_of_birth )
format %td dob
list
        
    year_o~h    dob    
            
1.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
2.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
3.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
4.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
5.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
            
6.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
7.    1.90e+12    01may2020    
8.    1.91e+12    01jun2020    
9.    1.91e+12    01jun2020    
10.    1.91e+12    01jun2020

Madu

[Nick Cox]

Rich Goldstein is correct. Changing the display format alone can't possibly help here. You have numbers that are of the order of 2 trillion and if you tell Stata that they are really yearly dates. that means roughly 2 trillion years from now.. You need to push numbers through dofc() and then assign a pertinent daily display format:

. di %td dofc(1.9039428e+12)
01may2020

More discussion at https://www.stata-journal.com/articl...article=dm0067