Date:         Wed, 19 Jun 2002 12:39:17 -0700
Reply-To:     John Hill <John.Hill@columbian.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         John Hill <John.Hill@columbian.com>
Subject:      question
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

I have a giant database of vehicles and the make and model fields are
dirty. The data entry folks have botched things up, typing in Ford in
every which way imaginable.  And then there's the F1PU, F2PU and just PU
for pickup models.  And so on.  You can only imagine.  There are
hundreds of permutations of models and I'm trying to simplify them for
analysis purposes.

So I'm trying to use the recode "tool" to do this and I was hoping to
create some sort of an If statement that would look for say, PU, in the
model field and if it sees that, it would recode it in a new field as
pickup.

The thing is, I'm at a loss as to how to create such an If statement.
Can anyone help?  I'm guessing it's some sort of string function but I
haven't tried any yet.  Was hoping for some advice first before I really
mess things up. Thanks for any help you can provide.

John Hill
800-743-3391
john.hill@columbian.com