How to remove last 3 digits from a numerical variable in STATA

[Praneetha Yannam]

Hello Everyone! I have a variable HHPBASE, from which I need to chop off last 3 digits, How do I do that? I tried dividing it by 1000 with intention to round it but, after division instead of decimals, the number display has changed. Thanks in advance.

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input double HHPBASE
101020101005
101020102001
101020103004
101020104002
101020105010
end

[Nick Cox]

* Example generated by -dataex-. For more info, type help dataex
clear
input double HHPBASE
101020101005
101020102001
101020103004
101020104002
101020105010
end

gen long wanted = floor(HHPBASE/1000)
format wanted HHPBASE %12.0f 

list 

     +--------------------------+
     |      HHPBASE      wanted |
     |--------------------------|
  1. | 101020101005   101020101 |
  2. | 101020102001   101020102 |
  3. | 101020103004   101020103 |
  4. | 101020104002   101020104 |
  5. | 101020105010   101020105 |
     +--------------------------+

[Jared Greathouse]

Nick Cox will correct me if I'm wrong, but presumably his answer here gets us 2 thirds of the way there. Note that I'm not at my computer, so I cannot test it myself.


EDIT: Nevermind, I misunderstood the question to mean "split at the last 3 characters"

[Chen Samulsion]

Use int() function to obtain the integer:

gen double NEW_HHPBASE=int(HHPBASE/1000)

[Nick Cox]

Jared Greathouse I think the question is about ignoring the last 3 digits, not isolating them.

[Praneetha Yannam]

Nick Cox That perfectly worked. Thankyou so much! And Chen Samulsion That also worked but it was only the display format that was concerning to me. Perhaps specifying long before the newly generated variable could do the job. Thankyou