Split numeric

[Leon Edelman]

Greetings all,

Suppose I have variable X that I want to convert to X1 and X2 as follows:

X	X1	X2
123	12	3
456	45	6
7890	789	0

So basically I want to take X and make two new variables- variable X2 has only the last character of X and variable X1 has all but the last character of X.

I tried to split string but am not able to get it to do this. Please advise, thanks so much!

[Nick Cox]

clear 
input X    X1    X2
123    12    3
456    45    6
7890    789    0
end 

gen work = string(X, "%12.0f")
gen x1 = real(substr(work, 1, length(work) - 1)) 
gen x2 = real(substr(work, -1, 1)) 

list 

    +-----------------------------------+
     |    X    X1   X2   work    x1   x2 |
     |-----------------------------------|
  1. |  123    12    3    123    12    3 |
  2. |  456    45    6    456    45    6 |
  3. | 7890   789    0   7890   789    0 |
     +-----------------------------------+

Note that the format argument here %12.0f is pulled out of the air and

1. would not be needed if your real data were all like your example.

2. might need to be different for longer numbers.

[Leon Edelman]

So perfect thank you !

[Romalpa Akzo]

Other solution:

gen X1=floor(X/10)
gen X2=X-X1*10

[Nick Cox]

Romalpa: Indeed, if we can assume, as the example seems to imply, that the string contains integer equivalents.

Note -- with the same assumption -- that mod(X, 10) is an alternative for the last numeric character.