topic Re: scan function in SAS Programming

scan function

sanyam13 — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 17:07:40 GMT

Data work;

author = 'agatha christie' ;

first = substr(scan(author,1, ' , ' ),1,1);

run;

i find this question in a mock test, question is what would be the length of the variable first in output data set , Answer given in mock test for this is 200 but when i run this program in sas i got 15 as length for the variable first . can you help me out in this case though i know length of scan function is 200 .

Re: scan function

ybolduc — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 17:21:37 GMT

Hi Sanyam,

From what I remember, if the destination variable does not have a specified length, SAS will set it to the length of the source.

Small test:

data toto;
  length a $200.;
  a = 'Hello World!';
  b = 'Hello World!';
  c = scan(a, 1, ' ');
  d = scan(b, 1, ' ');
run;

c has length 200 and d has length 15.

I hope that helps.

I assume in the question the was something indicating the length of author.

Thanks.