Date variable conversion from string format

[Joel Ng]

Hi everyone, I have date variables in the following format - yyyymmdd_hhmmss

I've looked at the existing date variable conversion threads and can't find one that helps for this specific type of format. Here's examples of the strings in the variable

TIMESTAMP
20210219_193618
20210219_195936
20210220_143856
20210220_161023
20210221_154242
20210221_161101
20210221_172955
20210221_181902
20210221_185542
20210221_192824

As you can see the format has the year, month then day, followed by an underscore, then the hours, minutes and seconds.

How can I convert this to a date format? I've tried the following code -

generate voucher_date=clock(TIMESTAMP, "yyyymmdd_hhmmss")

and it produces missing values.

[Øyvind Snilsberg]

gen double voucher_date = clock(TIMESTAMP, "YMDhms")
format %tc voucher_date

[Anne Calves]

Thanks Oyvind ! I had a similar problem.

[Nick Cox]

help datetime

remains the documentation that people concerned with dates and times should look at sooner or later. The good news when you have a specific problem is that most of it can be skimmed or skipped as being about other specific problems. But nothing there or in any threads based on understanding it supports the idea that

yyyymmdd_hhmmss

could be an argument to clock(),

[Anne Calves]

Hello,
I'm having trouble converting data in date format again. The following code, proposed by Oyvind was working so far:

gen double date1 =clock(date_s,"DMYhms")
format %tc date1

For all the questionnaires collected in January however, the code produces missing values.

The variable date_s is in the following format

29 dec. 2021 10:25:52
6 janv. 2022 10:53:15

Any thought?

Thanks,

[Øyvind Snilsberg]

replace date_s = subinstr(date_s,"janv","jan",.)

gen double date1 = clock(date_s,"DMYhms")
format %tc date1

[Nick Cox]

Edits for several other months seem likely. Stata isn't up to months in French if their abbreviations differ much from

. di "`c(Mons)'"

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

[Anne Calves]

To add information the variable date_s has been created from an original variable with accent (survey conducted in French) with the following code:

capture drop date_s
gen date_s = ustrlower( ustrregexra( ustrnormalize( submissiondate, "nfd" ) , "\p{Mark}", "" ) )
recast str22 date_s

[Nick Cox]

gen mois = word(date_s, 2 ) 

tab mois

[Anne Calves]

Great! It worked! Thanks a lot for your swift answers.