What is ".a" and ".c"?

Re: What is ".a" and ".c"?

by Mark Pletcher -

Right, these are codes that Stata uses for being more specific about what KIND of missing data you have.  For our purposes (and yours, when you are cleaning data), I believe that referring to these with a simple period (.) will be sufficient, such as:

gen ValueIsMissing = 0

replace ValueIsMissing = 1 if Value ==.

this should do the same as

replace ValueIsMissing = 1 if Value==.a | Value==.c

(unless you have other kinds of missing values other than .a and .c)

Hope that is clear!