is there a command for "matching" string data?

is there a command for "matching" string data?

by Laura Koth -
Number of replies: 1

for my project, I would like to match samples of disease patients with controls by demographic data, so for example, I would like to have patients and controls matched on age (within 5-10 years), then gender, then race in that order of importance

is there a way to match subjects in STATA? I was thinking maybe this could be done using a merge function if I created a new age variable that was divided up into 5 or 10 year incrementing units and then merged the file containing the cases with a file containing the controls.

any other ideas?

appreciate any suggestions

Laura