Date to string

[Guillaume Pousse]

Hi all,

I am finding many posts on how to convert a variable (float, string, etc.) to a properly formatted date in %td, %tm, or %tq, but I am not finding anything on how to go from the latter to the former.

Specifically, I have dates in %tq format I wish to make string.

How to proceed?

Thanks in advance!

[Carlo Lazzaro]

Guillaume:
a trivial toy-example follows:

. use "https://www.stata-press.com/data/r18/nlswork.dta"
(National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women, 14-24 years old in 1968)


. tostring year, g(string_year)
string_year generated as str2

. list year string_year in 1/10

     +-----------------+
     | year   string~r |
     |-----------------|
  1. |   70         70 |
  2. |   71         71 |
  3. |   72         72 |
  4. |   73         73 |
  5. |   75         75 |
     |-----------------|
  6. |   77         77 |
  7. |   78         78 |
  8. |   80         80 |
  9. |   83         83 |
 10. |   85         85 |
     +-----------------+

.

[Joseph Coveney]

. . . I have dates in %tq format I wish to make string.

How to proceed?

You might be looking for something like this:

version 18

clear *

input int date_dt
244
248
251
end

format date_dt %tq

*
* Begin here
*
generate str date_st = strofreal(date_dt, "%tq")

list, noobs

exit

If you want to replace the variable, then you could, following Carlo's hint, do something like the following.

tostring date_dt, replace format("%tq") force

[daniel klein]

If the variable has display format %tq, you can more directly

tostring varname , replace usedisplayformat