topic Fixing Char Variable Length in New SAS User

Fixing Char Variable Length

cass5957 — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 15:13:46 GMT

Hi all! I'm having some issues getting the "inits" variable to be 3 characters and keep all 3 initials. So far, the inits variable is 24 characters and if I add a length statement "Inits $3;" it only outputs the first initial (not FML)

This is my code:

DATA WORK.State;
SET WORK.State2 (RENAME = (SocSecNum = SSN));
;
FirstInit=COMPRESS(FirsitInit, '.');
xMiddleInit=COMPRESS(MiddleInit, '.');
xLastInit=COMPRESS(LastInit, '.');
Inits = FirsitInit || MiddleInit || LastInit;
Initials = TRANWRD(COMPRESS(Inits, '. '),' ' , '-' );
Inits = Initials;

RUN;

Thank you!

Re: Fixing Char Variable Length

Tom — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 23:41:56 GMT

If you define INITS as length of only 3 and try to assign it a value that is longer than that it will just keep the first three characters.

In this assignment statement

Inits = FirstInit || MiddleInit || LastInit;

will only work if each of those other variables are defined with a length of one. For example if FIRSTINIT has a length of 8 then only the first three characters from that variable will fit in the new INITS variable and whatever values the other two variables had wouldn't matter.

Did you mean?

Inits = char(FirstInit,1)||char(MiddleInit,1)||char(LastInit,1);

Re: Fixing Char Variable Length

txim33 — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 23:10:37 GMT

Hi cass5957!

That was a tricky problem!

Here is the code that I used:

Inits = CAT(SUBSTR(FirstInit,1,1), SUBSTR(MiddleInit,1,1), SUBSTR(LastInit,1,1));

Otherwise if you want to use the compress function I also was able to get this code to work in the same way:

Inits = COMPRESS(CAT(FirstInit, MiddleInit, LastInit), '.');

Hope this helps!