Formatting date variable YYYYMM

[Kristina Gyure]

Hi,

I would appreciate your help with formatting date variables. I use Stata 15.

I would like to get YYYYMM-variables in a date formate and I used following syntax:

foreach var of varlist {
format `var' %12.0g
tostring `var', gen(junk`var')
gen junk`var'2 = mofd(date(junk`var', "YM"))
format junk`var'2 %tm
}


Then the result looks like this:
2010m1
2010m2
2010m3
2010m4
2010m5
2010m6
2010m7
2010m8
2010m9
201010

I wonder how I can get this result:
201001
201002
201003
201004
201005
201006
201007
201008
201009
201010

I have not found any help in the Stata manuals about working with dates and times.

[Nick Cox]

I gather that you want to see say 201905 if a monthly date corresponding a numeric variable is say May 2019. Consider

. help datetime display formats

. di %tmCYN ym(2019, 5)
201905

The Stata manuals give a great deal of help.

help datetime

help datetime display formats

give links to manual entries, although the help is detailed enough to answer questions like these.

Your syntax is incomplete (no varlist given) but assuming a numeric variable given with values like 201905 then a simpler way to get what you want is

gen wanted = ym(floor(given/100), mod(given, 100))
format wanted %tm

You don't have to take the route convert to string -- daily date -- monthly date. The year and month elements are already available for numeric calculations.

[Kristina Gyure]

Thank you very much for your help! Now I could get the dates in correct format.

Special thanks for the short syntax!