hi!

In a previous post someone mentioned that I had to be careful when forcing to destring because some values might be lost. I have, however, forced to destring company codes. I destringed it again to check, this time without destringing, and it went through anyways. However, the output is two times different. Could you explain to me what the difference is, and whether force destring has implications for my data in this case? this is my code:


Code:
destring BVD, generate(numeric_BVD) force
BVD contains nonnumeric characters; numeric_BVD generated as long

clear

use "C:\Users\timea\OneDrive\Documents\master\THEsis\stata\cash\temp2009.dta", clear

destring BVD, generate(numeric_BVD)
BVD has all characters numeric; numeric_BVD generated as long
thank you!