Conversion of dates in STATA

[Gerfried Eisenbauer]

I have a date variable in STATA in the format 13jul2000. I want to convert it into a date with

gen new_date = date(date, "DMY") format date %td

However, the date is given in float instead of string. Is there any way to convert the variable into a string without changing the input?

[Rich Goldstein]

it appears the date variable is already in the format, including display format, that you want; you can check this with -describe date-