Question about recoding a variable, having issues with deleting some unwanted values.

[Sara Moradi]

Hello everybody.

I am a stata beginner, trying to do some descriptive analysis on a survey data.
My version of stata is stata/IC 15.0.

There is a variable with 8 values in the survey. - 1, - 2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, that I would like to have an one way table for this variable.
The problem is here: - 1, - 2 and 6 are not valid values, so they shouldn't be take into account while calculating the table. And at the same time I can't drop people with these values, because they have valid observations for other varibles in the survey.
I tried to recode the variable in order to make a new one only with valid values and get rid of - 1, - 2 and 6.

recode perm3d - 2 - 1 6=. 1=1 2=2 3=3 4=4 5=5 , gen (perm)

but I get this error: unknown el - in rule
r(198);

Can you help with this issue pleas?
Thanks.

[Wouter Wakker]

Stata parses on spaces, so when you type recode perm3d - 2 - 1 6=. , Stata thinks you want to change five elements to missing: -, 2, -, 1, and 6. However, recode expects numerical values, not '- ', hence "unknown el - ". Removing the spaces for the negative values should solve the problem.

[Rich Goldstein]

I'm pretty sure that -recode- requires parentheses around the rules - see

help recode

also, however, if your "invalid" values are to be treated as missing, you will find the -mvdecode- command easier; see

help mvdecode

[Sara Moradi]

Thank you gentlemen! I checked both solutions and got the (same) answer.
Much appreciated!