topic Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country? in New SAS User

please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

AnkitaSingh_901 — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:45:59 GMT

this is the code:

data work.test;
First = 'Ipswich, England';
City_Country = substr(First,1,7)!!', '!!'England';
run;

Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

PaigeMiller — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:50:39 GMT

You can run PROC CONTENTS on the data set and find out yourself.

proc contents data=test;
run;

Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:51:09 GMT

Maxim 4: If in Doubt, Do a Test Run.

Run your code, and inspect the dataset, or run PROC CONTENTS and read the output.

Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

SASJedi — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 17:52:09 GMT

Try the LENGTH function:

data work.test;
	First = 'Ipswich, England';
	City_Country = substr(First,1,7)!!', '!!'England';
	HowLong=length(City_Country);
	put "NOTE: City_Country is " HowLong "characters long.";
run;

Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

AnkitaSingh_901 — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 18:22:39 GMT

i did that.. its showing length is 25. But i am not able to understand how??

Re: please let me know the length of the variable City_Country?

Tom — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 19:06:22 GMT

That will show how long the value stored is CITY_COUNTRY is. To see how long the variable is you need to use VLENGTH() function instead.

data work.test;
  First = 'Ipswich, England';
  City_Country = substr(First,1,7)!!', '!!'England';

  HowLong = vlength(First);
  put 'NOTE: First can hold ' howlong 'bytes.';
  HowLong = vlength(city_country);
  put 'NOTE: City_Country can hold ' howlong 'bytes.';

  HowLong=length(City_Country);
  put 'NOTE: "' City_Country $varying100. howlong '" is ' HowLong 'bytes long.';
run;

The reason that CITY_COUNTRY is defined to be able to hold 25 bytes is that is the GUESS that SAS made about what the maximum length string could have been generated by assignment statement where it first appeared. 16 bytes is the maximum length for FIRST and then you are appending 9 additional bytes. 16+9=25.