how to display/format dates including minutes?

[Francois Durant]

Hi,

I am using the following to download intraday data that are spaced by 30 minutes intervals.

clear all
local ticker "BTC-USD"
getsymbols `ticker', fm(1) fd(1) fy(1990) lm(12) frequency(30min) price(adjclose) yahoo clear

* What I have tried but does not work:
format period %tc

I am getting the date in the following Stata format and I cannot seem to find the right format to display the date and minutes. Please help. Thanks

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input double period
19983
19984
19985
19986
19987
19988
19989
19990
19991
19992
19993
19994
19995
19996
19997
19998
19999
20000
20001
20002
20003
20004
20005
20006
20007
20008
20009
20010
20011
20012
20013
20014
20015
20016
20017
20018
20019
20020
20021
20022
20023
20024
20025
20026
20027
20028
20029
20030
20031
20032
20033
20034
20035
20036
20037
20038
20039
20040
20041
20042
20043
20044
20045
20046
20047
20048
20049
20050
20051
20052
20053
20054
20055
20056
20057
20058
20059
20060
20061
20062
20063
20064
20065
20066
20067
20068
20069
20070
20071
20072
20073
20074
20075
20076
20077
20078
20079
20080
20081
20082
end

[Andrew Musau]

If you want a time variable, you need to create one. In any case, the date variable contains no information on time, so a conversion to time may not be wise (unless you have times held in other variables).

gen double time= clock(string(period, "%td") + "00:00", "DMYhm")
format time %tc

Res.:

. l in 1/5

     +--------------------------------+
     |    period                 time |
     |--------------------------------|
  1. | 17sep2014   17sep2014 00:00:00 |
  2. | 18sep2014   18sep2014 00:00:00 |
  3. | 19sep2014   19sep2014 00:00:00 |
  4. | 20sep2014   20sep2014 00:00:00 |
  5. | 21sep2014   21sep2014 00:00:00 |
     +--------------------------------+