Removing partial data from variable

[Randi-3]

Any help would be great!  I imported a huge file (about 550,000) entries
into SPSS.  The last column, which is in date form of "11/05/05" did not get
copied in correctly.  It shows up ,11/05/05.  An extra comma in the front of
the entry.  Does anyone know how I can get the comma to be erased?  There
are so many rows (550,000+) that I do not want to reimport, and have no clue
how I can remove these commas.  Any help is appreciated!

[Mark A Davenport MADAVENP]

All,

I am missing soemthing here. In writing from SPSS to fixed ASCII, my
employee number variabel 8 columns, numeric ends up being written in
scientific notation.  When I go back to the SPSS data set and convert the
column to string in hopes of writing the numebr out a s a string, SPSS
converts the column into an 8 digit number with a value followd by a
string of seven 0s.   This is a recent install of 14 (with patch) so I am
thinking that I haven't reset an option correctly.

Any ideas other than writing the file to Excel and then writing it out in
fixed ASCII?

Mark

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Mark A. Davenport Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Office of Institutional Research
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
336.256.0395
[hidden email]

'An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good deal more
than an exact answer to an approximate question.' --a paraphrase of J. W.
Tukey (1962)

[Edward Boadi]

Hope this helps :

Compute DateVar = Replace(DateVar,",","").

Regards.
Edward.


-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of
Randi
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 10:23 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Removing partial data from variable


Any help would be great!  I imported a huge file (about 550,000) entries
into SPSS.  The last column, which is in date form of "11/05/05" did not get
copied in correctly.  It shows up ,11/05/05.  An extra comma in the front of
the entry.  Does anyone know how I can get the comma to be erased?  There
are so many rows (550,000+) that I do not want to reimport, and have no clue
how I can remove these commas.  Any help is appreciated!

[Maguin, Eugene]

Randi,

I'm going to assume that your current date variable (Date) is A9 format and
that you want an A8 format with the comma deleted.

String newdate(a8).
Compute newdate=substr(date,2,8).


Gene Maguin

[Mark A Davenport MADAVENP]

Randi,

Gene's solution works perfectly but don't forget the EXECUTE. command
after the COMPUTE statement.

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Mark A. Davenport Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Office of Institutional Research
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
336.256.0395
[hidden email]

'An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good deal more
than an exact answer to an approximate question.' --a paraphrase of J. W.
Tukey (1962)






Gene Maguin <[hidden email]>
Sent by: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <[hidden email]>
10/25/2006 11:53 AM
Please respond to
Gene Maguin <[hidden email]>


To
[hidden email]
cc

Subject
Re: Removing partial data from variable






Randi,

I'm going to assume that your current date variable (Date) is A9 format
and
that you want an A8 format with the comma deleted.

String newdate(a8).
Compute newdate=substr(date,2,8).


Gene Maguin

[Oliver, Richard]

Try explicitly setting the format of the variable prior to writing to the external file. For an 8-digit integer, for example:

formats varname (F8).



-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Mark A Davenport MADAVENP
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 10:31 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Writing to fixed ASCII

All,

I am missing soemthing here. In writing from SPSS to fixed ASCII, my employee number variabel 8 columns, numeric ends up being written in scientific notation.  When I go back to the SPSS data set and convert the column to string in hopes of writing the numebr out a s a string, SPSS converts the column into an 8 digit number with a value followd by a
string of seven 0s.   This is a recent install of 14 (with patch) so I am
thinking that I haven't reset an option correctly.

Any ideas other than writing the file to Excel and then writing it out in fixed ASCII?

Mark

***************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Mark A. Davenport Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Office of Institutional Research
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
336.256.0395
[hidden email]

'An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate question.' --a paraphrase of J. W.
Tukey (1962)

[Richard Ristow]

At 11:53 AM 10/25/2006, Gene Maguin had written

>I'm going to assume that your current date
>variable (Date) is A9 format and
>that you want an A8 format with the comma deleted.
>
>String newdate(a8).
>Compute newdate=substr(date,2,8).

At 12:07 PM 10/25/2006, Mark A Davenport MADAVENP responded:

>Gene's solution works perfectly but don't forget
>the EXECUTE. command after the COMPUTE statement.

Actually, please do forget it. EXECUTE is not
needed to make a transformation effective. It's a
very common misperception that it is (I think I
know why), but it can be harmful. EXECUTE forces
a complete read of the data file, so it can take
a lot of extra time with a big file. (The
original inquiry was about a big file.)

For discussion of EXECUTE, see "Use EXECUTE
sparingly" in any edition of Raynald Levesque's
book(*), or more postings of mine than I care to count.

(*) Levesque, Raynald, "SPSS® Programming and
Data Management, 2nd Edition/A Guide for SPSS® and SAS® Users".
SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, 2005;

Levesque, Raynald, and SPSS Inc., "SPSS®
Programming and Data Management, 3rd Edition/A
Guide for SPSS® and SAS® Users".
SPSS, Inc., Chicago, IL, 2005.

You can download the third edition free as a PDF file, from
http://www.spss.com/spss/SPSS_programming_data_mgmt.pdf.

I don't know whether the second edition is still
available for download. The third edition
includes a lot on Python programming. For any
SPSS version before 14, the second edition will be at least as good.

[Richard Ristow]

At 11:53 AM 10/25/2006, Gene Maguin wrote:

>>The last column, which is in date form of "11/05/05" shows up [as]
>>",11/05/05".

>I'm going to assume that your current date variable (Date) is A9
>format and that you want an A8 format with the comma deleted.
>
>String newdate(a8).
>Compute newdate=substr(date,2,8).

Exactly so. However, you also might want the date as an SPSS date
variable; it's often the most useful form. To make a date variable that
*displays* mm/dd/yy (not *is* mm/dd/yy - date variables have no
inherent format),

NUMERIC newdate (ADATE8).
COMPUTE newdate=NUMBER(substr(date,2),ADATE8).

(Not tested)