Destring Error Message "str3 not allowed"

[Harlan Sayles]

Does anyone have any idea why I am getting the 101 error message below? This seems like a very simple application of -destring- but it will not work.

Harlan

. des rds17

storage display value
variable name type format label variable label
-------------------------------------------------------
rds17 str1 %9s RDS17 Nose/eye allergies

. tabl rds17

RDS17 |
Nose/eye |
allergies | Freq. Percent Cum.
------------+-----------------------------------
| 27 1.61 1.61
0 | 1,126 67.10 68.71
1 | 463 27.59 96.31
2 | 62 3.69 100.00
------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 1,678 100.00

. destring rds17, replace
str3 not allowed
r(101);

[Clyde Schechter]

Very strange. I cannot replicate your problem on my set up. I created a data set containing just this one variable, and ran all the same commands you ran, with the same results, except that the -destring- command worked as expected and converted all values to numeric.

I'm running Stata 14.1 MP2 on a Windows 7 machine.

[Harlan Sayles]

I have STATA 14.1 SE on a Windows 7 machine. I've used -destring- many times before and never run into this issue. I eventually just created new variables as a work-around for today. Thanks for trying to help.