SAS Remove Special Character

abdelrahmanmaha — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 12:36:06 GMT

In this topic we will deal with removing special characters

1- Tranwrd

tranwrd(column, "?", " ")
input: "Hello?World" 
output: "Hello World" 
Note: the result is always 200 byte, so keep using length=<length>
good for: replacing or removing single character

document: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000215027.htm

2- Translate

Translate(column, "`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+\|[]{};:',.<>?/")
input: "Hel)lo?Wo.r*ld" 
output: "HelloWorld" 
Note: try to replace ? which used as "space" using tranwrd then use translate 
good for: 
1- removing special characters if spaces are exist 
2- It also have some character option for lower, upper, and letters,...

documentation: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000215153.htm

3- Compress and Kcompress

compress(column, "c3b9"x)
compress(column,"`~!@#$%^&*()-_=+\|[]{};:',.<>?/")
c3b9 is the hexadecimal of ù
x is used for hexadecimal representation 
input: "Hello World�" 
output: "Hello World" 
Note: use x if you need hex repr cause chars like � has different hex representation 
take the string which has this special character to text to hex converted and use it's hex to remove it 
good for: 
1- removing hard special characters 
2- It also have some modifiers in documentation which help a lot

Documentation: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000212246.htm

4- kpropdata(COLUMNA ,'hex', 'utf-8') followed by Tranwrd #1

kpropdata(COLUMN ,'hex', 'utf-8') 
if you have this char "�" and followed compress and kcompress hex and normal text and not works 
you should consider kpropdata which Removes or converts unprintable characters 
also if you find hex "efbfbd" which refers to corrupted string 
the only way which works with me was kpropdata followed by tranwrd

documentation: http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/nlsref/61893/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a003285543.htm

topic SAS Remove Special Character in New SAS User

SAS Remove Special Character