Transform string to date failed

[Johnny YANG]

Please help me to transform the "date" variable to real date form "YYYYMMDD". I have tried everything but failed. Really don't know why. The data file is attached.

Thank you!

[Joseph Coveney]

.ÿgenerateÿintÿdate_dtÿ=ÿdate(date,ÿ"MDY")

.ÿformatÿdate_dtÿ%tdCY-N-D

.ÿlÿdateÿdate_dtÿinÿ1/2

ÿÿÿÿÿ+---------------------------+
ÿÿÿÿÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿdateÿÿÿÿÿÿdate_dtÿ|
ÿÿÿÿÿ|---------------------------|
ÿÿ1.ÿ|ÿAprÿ01,ÿ1983ÿÿÿ1983-04-01ÿ|
ÿÿ2.ÿ|ÿAprÿ01,ÿ1985ÿÿÿ1985-04-01ÿ|
ÿÿÿÿÿ+---------------------------+

.

What did you try?

[Johnny YANG]

.ÿgenerateÿintÿdate_dtÿ=ÿdate(date,ÿ"MDY")

.ÿformatÿdate_dtÿ%tdCY-N-D

.ÿlÿdateÿdate_dtÿinÿ1/2

ÿÿÿÿÿ+---------------------------+
ÿÿÿÿÿ|ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿdateÿÿÿÿÿÿdate_dtÿ|
ÿÿÿÿÿ|---------------------------|
ÿÿ1.ÿ|ÿAprÿ01,ÿ1983ÿÿÿ1983-04-01ÿ|
ÿÿ2.ÿ|ÿAprÿ01,ÿ1985ÿÿÿ1985-04-01ÿ|
ÿÿÿÿÿ+---------------------------+

.

What did you try?

I tried gen date1=date(date,"MDY")
but only generate missing values

[Nick Cox]

Seeing a .csv file is not definitive as we need to know what the data look in Stata. When I used db import delimited the dates were imported as string but @Joseph Coveney's syntax worked fine.

For future posts please read and act on all of https://www.statalist.org/forums/help#stata including giving data examples and the exact code you used, and not other files.

[Johnny YANG]

Seeing a .csv file is not definitive as we need to know what the data look in Stata. When I used db import delimited the dates were imported as string but @Joseph Coveney's syntax worked fine.

For future posts please read and act on all of https://www.statalist.org/forums/help#stata including giving data examples and the exact code you used, and not other files.

Thank you!