help with string variable comprising multiple lines

[Reese Crispen]

Hi Statalist,

After importing from Excel (-import excel-; .xlsx), I have some string variable values that comprise multiple lines.

For example:

. di var1[108]
This 
    is 
   one 
   string variable
.

Is there any way to trim this to one line? Or is that something that needs to be done in Excel before I import?

Thanks in advance,

Reese
v 14.2

[Clyde Schechter]

So it appears that this variable contains some character that displays in such a way as to cause a line break. If this is not Unicode data, the most likely culprit is a line-feed, which is ASCII character 10. If that's it:

replace var1 = subinstr(var1, "`=char(10)'", " ", .)

That will replace all of those characters with ordinary spaces. If you then have double spaces between words that you want to get rid of, follow up with

replace var1 = itrim(var1)

Now, if ASCII character 10 isn't the culprit, you need to find out what is. For that purpose, I recommend you install Robert Picard's -chartab- program, -ssc install chartab-. Run -chartab var1- and you will get a list of all the characters that occur in your variable, along with a description, and you will probably be able to figure out from the descriptions which one is causing the difficulty and then eliminate it along the lines shown above.

[Reese Crispen]

Thanks Clyde! Good call--that's exactly what I was looking for!