Date:         Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:12:37 -0500
Reply-To:     Gene Maguin <emaguin@buffalo.edu>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Gene Maguin <emaguin@buffalo.edu>
Subject:      Re: SPSS cannot treat string variables as string variables?
In-Reply-To:  <CACdH1Vgzv5uCDh-z=kHw+Y6oU2wRJ49JEZYOs3=Cqb7d6Mju4Q@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

The immediate answer is to declare timedate as A11, because var00001 is string and you are extracting a substring (as David said). The result, therefore, will be a string. But, I’d bet that’s not where you want to wind up. That is, you want timedate to be a numeric variable with a timedate format so that you can do arithmetic with it. That requires more work. 

This is untested.

 

Compute Timedate=number(concat(substr(var00001,5,2),’-‘,substr(var00001,1,3),’-‘,substr(var00001,8,4)),date11).

 

Gene Maguin

 

 

 

 

 

 

From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of huang jialin
Sent: Thursday, December 01, 2011 11:48 AM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: SPSS cannot treat string variables as string variables?

 

Hi,

 

I imported data from SQL sever by ODBC. There is a string variable, formatted as following:

 

Jun 22 2010  6:23AM

Apr 11 2011  3:16PM

Nov  1 2010 10:52PM

Aug 11 2011 12:05PM

 

I tried to pull out the date only, by using substr() function in SPSS. Thus, my syntax is as below:

 

COMPUTE timedate=substr(var00001, 1, 11).

EXECUTE.

 

But I kept on having warning like this:

 

>Error # 4309 in column 1024.  Text: (End of Command) 

>Invalid combination of data types in an assignment.  Character strings may 

>only be assigned to string variables.  Numeric and logical quantities may only 

>be assigned to numeric variables.  Consider using the STRING or NUMBER 

>function. 

>Execution of this command stops.

 

However, in the variable view, it is a string variable. How can I solve this problem?

 

Thank you very much.

 

Sincerely,

Jialin 


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