Substr/Strlen Issue

[Davia Downey]

Hello Statalisters,

I have an issue trying to use substr to split an existing variable. I have a variable County2 which looks like:

CountyMT
CountyMI
CountyVA
CountyTX

and so on. I've generated a new variable named StateAbbr using

generate str1 StateAbbrv = " "

and now have a blank variable ready for input. From what I've read I believe I should be able to replace the new variable with just the state abbreviations using something like

replace StateAbbrv= substr(County2, 1, strlen(County2)-6)

but this just keeps the Co part of the original County2 variable, not the two letter state abbreviation at the end. Should it be a +6 instead or am I approaching this the wrong way altogether?

[daniel klein]

You want

replace StateAbbrv = substr(County2, -2, .)

By the way, you could just start with

generate StateAbbrv = substr(County2, -2, .)

right away.

If you expect some non-ASCII characters (unlikely in English), use usubstr() instead.

[Davia Downey]

Thanks, daniel. That worked a treat.