Q:

turn a string variable containing dates into a date variable Stata

I have  variables day,month and year, month is string and day,year is numeric, what is the fastest way to convert this into the correct date format (dmy)? I know I can write code converting the month into numeric month (might be little long) and then use mdy() function, is there a faster way ? or make use of the original month and year to create a mdy format?   
I appreciate any suggestion

A:

Consider concatenating variables (converting numeric ones to string) and then converting to DMY:
Input Data
month     day   year
January   21    2016
February  13    2016
March     6     2016

Stata script
gen fulldate = date(string(day) + "" + month + "" + string(year), "DMY")
format fulldate %td

Result
month       day year    fulldate
January     21  2016    21jan2016
February    13  2016    13feb2016
March       6   2016    06mar2016

