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help for nicedates
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Nice dates, especially for time series graphs

        nicedates [yvarlist] timevar [if exp] [in range] [ , n(#) ]


Description

    nicedates shows a numlist of "nice" dates as determined by _tsnatscale
    for timevar, which is normally a time variable.  nicedates examines the
    display format of timevar to determine whether it includes daily, weekly,
    monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or yearly dates. If in doubt, the guess
    will be yearly, which implies that nicedates will give sensible answers
    with numeric variables other than dates. The list of nice dates is
    accessible after nicedates as r(dates).

    Other numeric variables yvarlist may also be specified. This may be
    useful if a variable includes missing values for early and/or late values
    of timevar, so that, for example, the time range of a graph will be less
    than that of timevar.


Options

    n() suggests a number of "nice" dates to be returned. The default is 5.


Examples

    . webuse wpi1
    . nicedates wpi t
    . scatter wpi t, xla(`r(dates)')


Author

        Nicholas J. Cox, University of Durham
        n.j.cox@durham.ac.uk


Also see

    Online:  help for _tsnatscale