How to overcome these issues with dates variables?

[Bader Bin Adwan]

Hi,

My questions are:

1) how to convert birth date and admission date into usable format because when I try to generate new variable using this command gen dob2 = date(Birth_Date, "DMY") it does not work and give missing values for all observations which is not true. I am assuming because the year is not spelling out completely in the original variable as seen in the example?

2) some observations under variable Surg_Date has date and time together, how to remove the time only and keep the date, also who to convert ##NULL into (0) or missing?

clear
input str9(Birth_Date Admission_Date) str16 Surg_Date
" 3-Jul-12" "31-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"30-Aug-15" "29-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"26-Nov-14" "29-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"26-Mar-09" "28-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"25-May-20" "31-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"29-Jan-12" " 1-Jan-21" "#NULL!"          
" 7-Dec-18" " 2-Jan-21" "#NULL!"          
"29-Jul-72" "12-Nov-20" "#NULL!"          
"29-Dec-20" "29-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
" 6-Sep-61" "30-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"10-Aug-03" "15-Nov-20" "#NULL!"          
"10-Jul-42" "22-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"23-Apr-78" "30-Dec-20" "12/31/2020 12:00"
"28-Dec-03" "31-Dec-20" "12/31/2020 12:00"
"17-Sep-53" "30-Aug-20" "#NULL!"          
"25-Aug-78" " 2-Jan-21" "#NULL!"          
" 7-Mar-99" "30-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"29-Nov-87" "30-Dec-20" "12/30/2020 12:00"
" 9-Apr-13" "29-Dec-20" "#NULL!"          
"28-Nov-20" " 4-Jan-21" "#NULL!"          
end

Thanks for helping

[Nick Cox]

See the help for date() to find out how to specify a century, say by adding a third argument 2025.

[Hemanshu Kumar]

gen dob2 = daily(Birth_Date, "DMY", 2022)
gen adm_date = daily(Admission_Date, "DMY", 2022)
gen surg_date = dofc(clock(Surg_Date,"MDYhm"))
format %td dob2 adm_date surg_date

The problem with your command was that you need to tell Stata how to resolve the two digit years. See

help date()

[Bader Bin Adwan]

See the help for date() to find out how to specify a century, say by adding a third argument 2025.

Thanks, that was useful

[Bader Bin Adwan]

gen dob2 = daily(Birth_Date, "DMY", 2022)
gen adm_date = daily(Admission_Date, "DMY", 2022)
gen surg_date = dofc(clock(Surg_Date,"MDYhm"))
format %td dob2 adm_date surg_date

The problem with your command was that you need to tell Stata how to resolve the two digit years. See

help date()

Thank you man, you are a legend, problems solved with ease!