Data concatenation in SPSS

Question

I have two data columns in SPSS

hhid = 1 2 3

carid = 26 27 28

I want to create a new column which concatenates both the hhid and carid and gives me an output

Newid = 1_26 2_27 3_28

I am new to SPSS, I appreciate your help.

Answer 1

The following code assumes, that your id variables are numeric. Otherwise just delete the STRING functions from the COMPUTE command.

* generate a string variable of 17 characters. Adjust length as you wish.
STRING Newid (A17).
COMPUTE Newid = CONCAT(LTRIM(STRING(hhid,F8)), "_", LTRIM(STRING(carid,F8))).
EXECUTE.

Explanation: The STRING(var,format) function transforms the numeric value of "var" into a string of the given format. In the code above the format is an 8 digit number without any decimals. The Output of this function is an 8 character long string with leading blanks. To delete the leading blanks, this function is wrapped in the LTRIM(string) function.