Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:38:58 +0200
Reply-To: John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Sender: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Subject: Re: Splitting a string
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
Jon
I love the fancy stuff: it's just that the kind of students I taught (and still help) have enough problems running basic SPSS syntax without having to get their heads round additional bells and whistles, especially when they have to download extensions etc. Perhaps in 5 years I'll get round to a second and third level of tutorials, but things like attitude measurement and scale construction will take precedence. Meanwhile I have to finish blocks 2 and 3 and decide how much plain English introduction to write for inferential stats without using any equations.
Neither solution from Kylie and Richard worked first time. Kylie's worked when I substituted a variable name for str. Meanwhile I had already stripped the letters off manually by copying the column to Word, using find/replace and then pasting it back into a new column. Only 15 codes and it only took a couple of minutes.
*Kylie's (amended) .
COMPUTE y=NUMBER(CHAR.SUBSTR(student,CHAR.LENGTH(student)-2),f8).
* My check .
compute check = y - var00004 .
freq check .
check
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid
0
318
100.0
100.0
100.0
The following arithmetic produced the variables needed once the letters were stripped off.
compute year = trunc (y/100) .
compute perform = trunc ((y - year*100)/10) .
compute groupid = y - (year*100) - (perform * 10) .
freq year to groupid .
year
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid
1
78
24.5
24.5
24.5
2
74
23.3
23.3
47.8
3
62
19.5
19.5
67.3
4
66
20.8
20.8
88.1
5
38
11.9
11.9
100.0
Total
318
100.0
100.0
perform
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid
0
112
35.2
35.2
35.2
1
79
24.8
24.8
60.1
2
127
39.9
39.9
100.0
Total
318
100.0
100.0
groupid
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Valid
1
172
54.1
54.1
54.1
2
118
37.1
37.1
91.2
3
11
3.5
3.5
94.7
4
11
3.5
3.5
98.1
5
4
1.3
1.3
99.4
6
2
.6
.6
100.0
Total
318
100.0
100.0
Thanks to everyone else for their suggestions.
Why does the font size change irrevocably after we copy output from SPSS?
John Hall
johnfhall@orange.fr
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Jon K Peck
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: Splitting a string
Just for fun, here is a one-command solution using the SPSSINC TRANS extension command available from Developer Central. (I know John won't like this, but here it is anyway.)
spssinc trans result=x y z
/formula 're.search(r"(\d)(\d)(\d)",f).groups()'.
It creates numeric variables x, y, and z each holding a single digit, where f is the input variable.
Regular expressions such as these provide powerful pattern-based string manipulation techniques.
Regards,
Jon Peck
SPSS, an IBM Company
peck@us.ibm.com
312-651-3435
From: John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date: 09/13/2010 11:58 PM
Subject: [SPSSX-L] Splitting a string
Sent by: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not often I ask for advice, but I am helping someone out with a data set
which has a string variable that needs splitting. The strings consist of
one letter ot two, followed by three digits, each of which indicates
something different. I've sorted the letter codes manually, but I still
need to generate three new variables, one for each digit eg:
f502 5 0 2
f503 5 0 3
f504 5 0 2
f521 5 2 1
fy101 1 0 1
fy102 1 0 2
fy111 1 1 1
fy121 1 2 1
I could do it manually in the Data Editor by scrolling down and deleting the
letters then creating three variables arithmetically with
compute x = trunc (y/100)
compute z = mod (y/10)
etc etc, but someone out there will have a much neater solution.
John Hall
johnfhall@orange.fr
http://surveyresearch.weebly.com
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