Dear Pedro.

I think you can convert the field to ## (instead of a single #). This is because the sign "-" requires space when considering the length of a field. Otherwise the structure of the datafile would break and no longer work.

The other way around should work as well although it seems like a lot of work for introducing a negative number.

Kind Regards, Torsten Bonde Christiansen.

epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:

Dear EpiData friends,

I have a qes like this

days NUMBER OF DAYS WITHOUT MEDICINE IN THE PERIOD ##

However the ones who filled the CRFs filled this with -1 if there was no information about this question.

Now Im testin the entrys to start feeding the datasets and just realize that -1 is not a legal integer for field #

I thought that converting this field from # to <A > would work and later in the analysis to encode this variable to integer.

WOuld this work? any more elegant workaround?

Best regards,

Abraço forte e que a força esteja com você, Pedro Emmanuel _______________________________________________ EpiData-list mailing list EpiData-list@lists.umanitoba.ca http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/listinfo/epidata-list

Dear Pedro:

-1 is a legal integer, but it needs space. You first say the field was "##", then it must accommodate -1. Later you say it was "#", that cannot accommodate it. If the first is true (##) then something else is wrong, if the second is true (#) then the field is too short. If you do not have it, create a qes file from the REC file and look what type of field is there. While converting a numeric file to a text file is easy, it looses too much information (ability to calculate), and going the other way is not trivial I believe, thus try to figure out what is wrong with the actual presumed numeric field DAYS.

Regards,

Hans

epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:

Dear EpiData friends,

I have a qes like this

days NUMBER OF DAYS WITHOUT MEDICINE IN THE PERIOD ##

However the ones who filled the CRFs filled this with -1 if there was no information about this question.

Now Im testin the entrys to start feeding the datasets and just realize that -1 is not a legal integer for field #

I thought that converting this field from # to <A > would work and later in the analysis to encode this variable to integer.

WOuld this work? any more elegant workaround?

Best regards,

Abraço forte e que a força esteja com você, Pedro Emmanuel