@mid—603

@ltrim(" I doubt that I did it. ")

returns “I doubt that I did it. ”. Note that the spaces on the right remain.

See also @rtrim (p. 606) and @trim (p. 608).

Takes the numeric values given by the arguments arg1, and optionally, arg2, etc. and returns a date number using the required format string, fmt.

Example:

The expressions,

@makedate(1999, "yyyy")

@makedate(99, "yy")

both return the date number 729754.0 corresponding to 12 midnight on January 1, 1999.

@makedate(199003, "yyyymm")

@makedate(1990.3, "yyyy.mm")

@makedate(1031990, "ddmmyyyy")

@makedate(30190, "mmddyy")

all return the value 726526.0, representing March 1, 1990.

See “Translating Ordinary Numbers into Date Numbers” on page 141 for additional details.

@replace—605

Observation-TO-Date. Returns a string containing the date or observation corresponding to observation number n, counted from the beginning of the current workfile. For example, consider the string assignment

%1 = @otod(5)

For an annual workfile dated 1991–2000, %1 will contain the string “1995”. For a quarterly workfile dated 1970:1–2000:4, %1 will contain the string “1971:1”. Note that @otod(1) returns the date or observation label for the start of the workfile.

See also @dtoo (p. 599).

Returns the base string str1, with the replacement str3 substituted for the target string str2. By default, all occurrences of str2 will be replaced, but you may provide an optional integer n to specify the number of occurrences to be replaced.

Example:

@replace("Do you think that you can do it?", "you", "I")

returns the string “Do I think that I can do it?”, while

@replace("Do you think that you can do it?", "you", "I", 1)

returns “Do I think that you can do it?”.

See also @insert (p. 600) and @mid (p. 603).