Formatting a String

[Cameron Sublett]

Hi. This will likely be a banal and rudimentary question. Apologies in advance, but I am stuck nevertheless. To my own disgrace, I am not able to troubleshoot through help format.

I have a string variable imported from an excel file. This string variable is stored as str6 %9s. I need to format this variable such that:
1. There are 6 characters/digits for each observation
2. There is a decimal before the final two characters/digits, and after the first 4.

Current values for this variable, TOP, include:

130800
83700
10100
100810

However, I need these (and all other) values to take the following form:

1308.00
0867.00
0101.00
1008.10

Thanks in advance.

[Clyde Schechter]

* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input str6 var1
"130800"
"83700"
"10100"
"100810"
end

destring var1, replace
replace var1 = var1/100
format var1 %07.2f
list

Added: It dawns on me that perhaps you want the result to be a string variable, not a numeric variable which, as formatted, looks like what you want. I'm not really sure. If you do need the result to be a string, then add the following to the end of the code:

tostring var1, replace force usedisplayformat

[Cameron Sublett]

Clyde -
Excellent. In fact, I did need the var to be stored as a string, so thank you. Much, much appreciated.