Why is this padding of the string necessary? Could PREGSTAT be more than five characters (either legitimately or illegitimately)? If so, then we might be altering true information that could be useful.
All possible PREGSTAT are less than 5 characters. The particular paddling is to be consistent with InterVA-4 software output, so that we have the same number of spaces when it comes to text alignment.
https://github.com/verbal-autopsy-software/InterVA4/blob/792fd94fcad1f143f55865e580a4ea0bc233e5bb/InterVA4_1.7/R/InterVA.R#L95
Why is this padding of the string necessary? Could PREGSTAT be more than five characters (either legitimately or illegitimately)? If so, then we might be altering true information that could be useful.