Search Command for Alphanumeric Characters

[Eliot Assoudeh]

Greetings,

I use Stata 18. I have a big dataset (30+K observations) and one of my variables (Unit Index) has more than 100 categories (alphanumeric strings). I want to write a command that generates a new variable and enters 1 for all observations, which unit index starts with the character "J" followed by numbers.
I tried the following codes, but with no success. I appreciate any advice/help, please.

generate newvar = 0
replace newvar = 1 if strpos (UnitInd, "J[0-9]")

OR

gen newvar = ustrregexs (0) if ustrregexs(UnitInd, "J[0-9]")

Thanks,
Eliot

[Benno Schoenberger]

Hi Elliot,

try

gen newvar = 1 if regexm(UnitInd,"^J")

All the best,
Benno

[Eliot Assoudeh]

Hi Benno,

Thanks! It is very helpful but the command also captured any code that starts with "JK" as well. I am only interested in capturing the codes that start with "J" and are followed by numbers. Any suggestions?

Thx!

[Eliot Assoudeh]

Got it!

gen newvar = 1 if regexm(UnitInd,"^J[0-9]")

Thank you so much Benno!