Split a string variable into character and numeric parts

[Nader Mehri]

Hi,
I have a string variable (profile) in my dataset which includes prefixes of H, W, B and the suffix numbers ranging from 1 to 1000 (H1, H2, H3, ..., H1000, W1, W2, W3, ..., W1000, etc). How can I split the prefix characters and the suffix numbers into two different parts. I have tried the below code which generates the suffix numbers but not the character part.
Thanks,
NM

gen iteration = regexs(0) if regexm(profile, "[0-9]*$")
destring iteration, replace

[Clyde Schechter]

If all of your prefixes are just one character long, then there is no need to resort to regular expressions. You can just do:

gen prefix = substr(profile, 1, 1)
gen numeric_part = substr(profile, 2, .)

[Rasool Baloch]

You can install a package -ssc install strkeep- and use as

strkeep strvar, gen(numpart) numeric
strkeep strvar, gen(strpart) alpha

Regards,
Rasool Bux

[Lorien Nair]

Hi Clyde,

I want to split a string variable st_name into string and numeric. The variable is currently setup in the following manner:

ABC 01
ABCDE 02
AB CDE 03
ABCDE FGHI 04

So the last two characters are always numeric, however the length and format of the string characters vary. The closest I came to achieving this was the following code:

strkeep st_name, gen(st_name1) alpha

However, it removes all spaces including the ones that are necessary in a string variable that describes names. For example: AB CDE 02 became ABCDE, instead of the desired output AB CDE.

[Nick Cox]

#4 should yield to

gen wanted1 = substr(st_name, 1, length(st_name) - 2) 
gen wanted2 = substr(st_name, -2, 2)

but I had more fun using moss from SSC

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str13 abc01
"ABCDE 02"     
"AB CDE 03"    
"ABCDE FGHI 04"
end

. moss abc01, match("([0-9]+)") regex

. gen stuff = subinstr(abc01, _match1, "", .)

. l

     +--------------------------------------------------------+
     |         abc01   _count   _match1   _pos1         stuff |
     |--------------------------------------------------------|
  1. |      ABCDE 02        1        02       7        ABCDE  |
  2. |     AB CDE 03        1        03       8       AB CDE  |
  3. | ABCDE FGHI 04        1        04      12   ABCDE FGHI  |
     +--------------------------------------------------------+