extacting portions of a string

[mark]

Hi
Working with irregular dated data - strings are "MM/dd?yyyyy"
Id like to etract "MM/YYYYY"
I have 60,000 observations - is there a function that will do the trick?
thanks

[EViews Gareth]

You can do it easily with string manipulation:

Code: Select all

alpha mydate = @left(date,3) + @right(date,4)


You can also get a bit more clever and use the date functions:

Code: Select all

alpha mydate = @datestr(@dateval(date,"MM/DD/YYYY"),"MM/YYYY")


Where you're using @dateval to convert your date strings into an EViews date, then you're using the @datestr function to convert it back into a string, but with the "MM/YYYY" format.