Hi All. Sorry for such a silly question, because I have read the help section in stata on this and I am continuing to get an error message.

I am working on 1:1 merge of two county-level data sets by year and fips variables but getting more an append. I thought it was because of an issue with fips variable (state and county codes), but I think it might be because one data set the year variable is in 4-digits and the other data set the variable is in 2 digits. I wanted to change the 4-digits into 2-digits. In a previous post from Clyde Schechter, he suggested very very helpful information on renaming year variable. But I am getting a continuous error message.

Code:
rename *20# *#
Code:
variable *20?* not found // error message I am receiving
Not sure what to do. Here is a little sample of my variables

Code:
* Example generated by -dataex-. To install: ssc install dataex
clear
input long fips_code int year
1001 2013
1001 2014
1001 2016
1001 2015
1001 2012
1003 2014
1003 2012
1003 2016
1003 2015
1003 2013
end
I am thinking once I can fix the year variable to two digits then the 1:1 merge between county-level data will merge accurately.

Thanks

Rene
Using Stata 12.1 on Mac OS Catalina