Concatenating strings piece by piece

[Sebastian Schirner]

Dear Statalisters,

I want to concatenate two string variables. Instead of combining them using e.g. concat() I need them to be combined "piece-wise". That is, letter 1 in variable A (e.g. gender) corresponds to letter 1 in variable B (e.g.origin) and so on. Ideally, a delimiter should be added between the "pieces".

What I have:

clear  
input str20 (A B)   
1111 2345
end

What I need:

clear  
input str20 (A B C)   
1111 2345 12_13_14_15
end

There might be solutions available that combine multiple loops and temp variables, but I was wondering if there is a more straightforward way to do this. Naturally, the actual number of observations is much larger and I am aware that this is not an optimal way to organize data.

Thank you and best regards
Sebastian

[Andrew Musau]

I want to concatenate two string variables. Instead of combining them using e.g. concat() I need them to be combined "piece-wise".

This is an interesting problem, but you have posted it on the wrong forum. Repost it on the General Forum.

[Sebastian Schirner]

Thank you for making me aware of this mistake. The post is in the other forum now.

[Andrew Musau]

Reposted and answered at https://www.statalist.org/forums/for...piece-by-piece