topic Re: Is there function in SAS EG similar to "text to column" in Excel? in New SAS User

Is there function in SAS EG similar to "text to column" in Excel?

Yiting — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 14:56:02 GMT

I have a character column like this

aaa_xyz

bbb_yxz

ccc_zyx

Now I want to break this column into two columns, one

aaa

bbb

ccc

and the other

xyz

yxz

zyx

How can I do that quickly in SAS EG? I know in Excel it can be done quickly by text to column… but SAS EG's split column function does something else… not want I want...

Re: Is there function in SAS EG similar to "text to column" in Excel?

Tom — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 14:59:37 GMT

Not sure how you would do it by clicking on things, but it is trivial to do with a program.

So if you have a variable names MYVAR in a dataset named HAVE you can use this program to create a new dataset called WANT that adds two now columns names COL1 and COL2.

data want;
  set have;
  length col1 col2 $10 ;
  col1 = scan(myvar,1,'_');
  col2 = scan(myvar,2,'_');
run;

Re: Is there function in SAS EG similar to "text to column" in Excel?

joeFurbee — Fri, 04 Jan 2019 16:17:23 GMT

and if you want to get rid of the original column, add the drop option into @Tom's code:

data want;
   set have;
   length col1 col2 $10;
   col1 = scan(myvar,1,'_');
   col2 = scan(myvar,2,'_');
   drop myvar;
run;