Date:         Fri, 11 Jan 2008 11:34:47 -0500
Reply-To:     Catherine Kubitschek <Catherine.A.Kubitschek.2@nd.edu>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Catherine Kubitschek <Catherine.A.Kubitschek.2@nd.edu>
Subject:      Re: select cases from part of idnum variable
Comments: To: Martin Sherman <MSherman@loyola.edu>
In-Reply-To:  <478683BB.7E13.0074.3@loyola.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

Martin, thanks for the information.

You've gotten a couple of good answers already.  Art Kendall's solution
works because your data is a standard format & width.

At 1/11/2008 08:49 AM, Art Kendall wrote:
>compute newidnum= trunc (idnum/10000).
>recode newidnum(101 thru 105, 107, 114, 117,118=1)(else=0) into mygroup.
>
>select if mygroup eq 1).
>  OR
>filter by mygroup.

John Norton's solution would work regardless of exactly what your data
looked like:

At 1/10/2008 05:49 PM, Norton, John wrote:
>Hi Dr. Sherman,
>
>I think one way to approach this is to treat the source as a string
>variable, and then convert the extracted values back to numbers within the
>ANY() function.  The following example takes this approach, and therefore
>allows me to use several string functions, evaluate for the selection
>criteria, and then create a binary flag variable on which I can filter or
>execute a SELECT IF command.
>
>COMPUTE flag =
>         ANY((NUMBER(SUBSTR(LTRIM(RTRIM(STRING(id,F8))),1,3),F8)),
>         101,102,103,104,105,107,114,117,118).

At 1/10/2008 08:44 PM, Martin Sherman wrote:
>Catherine: The format is F7.0. The lowest values are below and
>1010002
>1010007
>1010009
>1010016
>  .....
>.....
>1181319   Here is the highest value.  My concern is only with the first
>three digits.
>
>thanks,
>
><snip>
>
>At 1/10/2008 04:47 PM, Martin Sherman wrote:
> >Dear list: I have a large data set with a variable called IDNUM which has
> >8 digits. I want to select those cases that start with 101,  102,  103,
> >104, 105, 107, 114, 117, or 118. I don't care what numbers come after the
> >first three. I check Raynald Levesque's site and could not find a syntax
> >program for selecting cases based on the first three values of a numerical
> >variable. Suggestions appreciated. thanks,

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