Hi Barry,

wouldn't substring() do the trick?  Something like:

recode a=1 if substring(name,1,4)=="Hoov"

Best,
Indriði
______________________________
Indridi H. Indridason
Associate Professor/Associate Chair
Department of Political Science
Oddi v/Sturlugotu
University of Iceland
101 Reykjavik
Iceland

e-mail: [log in to unmask]
tel: +354 525 5209
homepage: www.hi.is\~ihi
----- Original Message -----
From: "Barry C. Burden" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 9:59 PM
Subject: [POLMETH] Stata string wildcards


> I am trying to write some if/then statements in Stata that depend on the
> value of a string variable.  The trouble is that variable contains names
> that are not always spelled the same way or written out fully.  For
> example, in one observation the name is written as "Hoover, Herbert" but
> in another observation it has been shortened to "Hoover, Herb."  To
> capture both of these possibilities I would like to tell Stata to recode
> if y=="Hoov*" or some such thing.  Unfortunately, the user guide isn't
> clear about the use of wildcards with string variables and my own
> experiments have failed.  Perhaps this is a better question for the
> Stata users list, but I thought another political scientist who has
> worked with strings might be able to come through with a solution.
>
> Barry
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Barry C. Burden
> University of Wisconsin
> Department of Political Science
> http://mywebspace.wisc.edu/bcburden/web/
>
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