How do I assign string a numeric range?

[anisha arya]

Hi,

I have a string variable "topincome" such as:

topincome

1

3

2

4

Each string "1", "2", "3" and "4" represents a numeric range, say, 0-5, 6-10, 11-15, and 16-20. How do I replace this string variable with their associated numeric range?

Thanks!

[Nick Cox]

You could do that in various ways. For most Stata purposes that would be going in quite the wrong direction. You're better off with 1 2 3 4 as values of a numeric variable and those strings as value labels.

. clear

. input str1 topincome

     topincome
  1. "1"
  2. "2"
  3. "3"
  4. "4"
  5. end

.
. gen wanted = word("0-5 6-10 11-15 16-20", real(topincome))

.
. list

     +-------------------+
     | topinc~e   wanted |
     |-------------------|
  1. |        1      0-5 |
  2. |        2     6-10 |
  3. |        3    11-15 |
  4. |        4    16-20 |
     +-------------------+

.* better idea

. destring topincome, replace
topincome: all characters numeric; replaced as byte

.
. label def topincome 1 "0-5" 2 "6-10" 3 "11-15" 4 "16-20"

.
. label val topincome topincome

.
. describe

Contains data
 Observations:             4                  
    Variables:             2                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Variable      Storage   Display    Value
    name         type    format    label      Variable label
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
topincome       byte    %10.0g     topincome
                                              
wanted          str5    %9s                  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorted by:
     Note: Dataset has changed since last saved.

.
. list

     +-------------------+
     | topinc~e   wanted |
     |-------------------|
  1. |      0-5      0-5 |
  2. |     6-10     6-10 |
  3. |    11-15    11-15 |
  4. |    16-20    16-20 |
     +-------------------+

.
.