topic Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths in SAS Data Management

Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

pmpradhan — Fri, 04 May 2018 20:47:36 GMT

I imported a "|" delimited file using proc import. Import says it imported the file successfully. I checked the number of observation and looks good to me. However, the variable at the end of the dataset has ",". For e.g.:

VarA

Yes,

No,

1.2,

3.5,

High,

if you could provide me a way to get rid of the "," at the end that would be great.

Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

novinosrin — Fri, 04 May 2018 20:57:16 GMT

data have;
input VarA $10.;
cards;
Yes,
No,
1.2,
1,
3.5,
High,
;

data want;
set have;
substr(vara,length(VarA),1)=' ';
run;

Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

Reeza — Fri, 04 May 2018 21:07:48 GMT

@pmpradhan wrote:

I imported a "|" delimited file using proc import. Import says it imported the file successfully. I checked the number of observation and looks good to me. However, the variable at the end of the dataset has ",". For e.g.:

VarA

Yes,

No,

1.2,

1,

3.5,

High,

if you could provide me a way to get rid of the "," at the end that would be great.

PROC IMPORT guesses at what it does. It does not always guess successfully. Given that the data does not meet your requirements you're better off modifying your process to import the file cleanly in the first place.

Usually you can get the code from the log and modify it. I noticed that you're posting in the DataFlux forum so I assume you're using DI studio?

Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

Ksharp — Sat, 05 May 2018 10:45:09 GMT

data have;
input VarA $10.;
want=prxchange('s/,+$//',1,strip(vara));
cards;
Yes,
No,
1.2,
1,
3.5,
High,
;
proc print noobs;run;

Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

art297 — Sat, 05 May 2018 18:59:22 GMT

Unless you want to remove multiple commas at the end of each variable's value, I'd suggest a minor change to @Ksharp's suggested code:

data have;
  input VarA $10.;
  want=prxchange('s/,$//',1,strip(vara));
  cards;
Yes,,
No,
1.2,
1,
3.5,
High,
Other
;

Art, CEO, AnalystFinder.com

Re: Getting rid of comma at the end of a variable with multiple lengths

pmpradhan — Fri, 11 May 2018 20:01:33 GMT

Thank you for speedy and simple solution! 🙂