Extracting hours (including decimal part) from string variable in hh:mm:ss

[Bruno Hoepers]

Hi all. I have a dataset with information on the time (i.e., hh:mm:ss) spent with national broadcasting by the president of Venezuela. The string variable storing time is “cadenas_time”. Please see part of the data below.

I need to extract the hours from the "cadenas_time" variable (including decimal points).

For instance, 2:10:13 would be converted to 2.17 (2 hours + 10/60 = 0.17)

Could someone help?

Thank you very much.

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input int year byte month int dm str9 country str8 cadenas_time
2012  1 624 "Venezuela" "20:42:57"
2012  2 625 "Venezuela" "26:24:27"
2012  3 626 "Venezuela" "11:59:00"
2012  4 627 "Venezuela" "6:49:20" 
2012  5 628 "Venezuela" "7:41:59" 
2012  6 629 "Venezuela" "18:22:52"
2012  7 630 "Venezuela" "15:57:50"
2012  8 631 "Venezuela" "19:33:40"
2012  9 632 "Venezuela" "9:22:41" 
2012 10 633 "Venezuela" "2:39:28" 
end
format %tm dm

[Clyde Schechter]

Well, if you did not have times exceeding 24 hours, it could be a one liner. But, you do, so it's a little harder:

split cadenas_time, parse(":") gen(hrs) destring
gen elapsed_hours = hrs1 + hrs2/60 + hrs3/(60*60)

[Bruno Hoepers]

Thanks a lot, Clyde.