How to generate a . in cells with blank entries

[Luis Mijares]

I have a data set that has blank entries and want to replace these blank entries with a . to indicate missing value, how would I do that?

[Rich Goldstein]

my guess (please read the FAQ and please use -dataex- to show data examples) is that your variable is a string variable; in that case, blank is missing; however, if you want to show "." (which will not be treated as missing), try this:

replace varname="." if varname==""

if you have a lot of variables you will want to place this in a loop and you can use -ds- or -findname- to find the full list of relevant variables; see their help files