create the day before a date

[Alice Yang]

Hello!

I'm still working with dates and now have a new problem. If I have a date 22dec2014, I want 1 day before that, which is 21dec2014, I could do

gen date_pre1 = mdy(month(date), day(date)-1, year(date))

that works if the date is not the first day of a month. If I have 01jul2017, I wonder how to get 30jun2017? The code above would generate a missing value.

Thanks a lot for any help.

[Clyde Schechter]

gen date_pre1 = date-1
format date_pre1 %td

[Alice Yang]

Thanks Clyde, this is so simple! I really overthink...