Thanks Jens When you export oswego.rec to STATA using EpiData, you get a string variable in STATA that you have to work with, but no error

I agree that this rather strange format with only mont hand day is not fantastic. Anyway, quite many people did use it because for brief studies it is OK The idea of developping a kind of conversion procedure makes sense, even if some recoding is needed after conversion like in STATA The crucial point is the ability to transfer old files to EpiData whether or not is absolutely "ready to use"

Regards

Robert

-----Message d'origine----- De : epidata-list-bounces@lists.umanitoba.ca [mailto:epidata-list-bounces@lists.umanitoba.ca] De la part de epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca Envoyé : mercredi 2 mars 2005 13:45 À : epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca Objet : [EpiData-list] Re: New analysis build (18) ready for testing(error reading date variables)

Robert wrote: "The last build does not work : cannot read rec file OSWEGO for example Any idea ??"

This is a marvellous example of why end-users should participate in testing.

It turns out that the version of OSWEGO.REC I am testing on has been updated with EpiData. When I do so all date fields are changed to full length dates including year. So I did not see the error. I can see now that with the original OSWEGO.REC I get the same error as indicated by Robert.

Lesson learned: Make sure that testing includes types of error that you do not want to happen.

In practice. We will from now on include a test of how analysis treats files with all the variable formats of Epi6. Even the ones we "abandoned", such as 2 digit year or dates without year. Rules from EpiData for these types of dates will be included in next build. (Extending to 4 digit years and adding current year to fields without year)

regards

Jens Lauritsen EpiData Association

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