topic Re: Removing Special Characters in SAS Programming

Removing Special Characters

navinrraj — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 09:44:38 GMT

hi there!

please help me to figure what mistake occur here

balls=compress('12(','(');

i want remove "(" open parenthesis for all variables "balls"

balls is variable name

"12(" is observation value like for entire variable columns

"3)" and so on.

Re: Removing Special Characters

Patrick — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 09:50:26 GMT

The syntax as such is correct. What's the problem? What's not working?

Please provide representative sample data in the form of a working and tested SAS data step and then explain us how the desired result should look like - or just post the data of the desired outcome.

Re: Removing Special Characters

RW9 — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 09:50:39 GMT

And what is the problem? That code works fine:

data want;
  balls=compress('12(','(');
run;

Re: Removing Special Characters

navinrraj — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:11:10 GMT

but 12 prints entire column

i want print 12 value for paritcular row only

balls=compress('12(','(');

is not working for tat

balls

12 its print like this

Re: Removing Special Characters

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:15:56 GMT

Read @Patrick's post and act on it. Post usable example data as advised, and the expected outcome.

Re: Removing Special Characters

Patrick — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:16:09 GMT

@navinrraj

How do you expect us to help you if you don't show us what you have and what you need? Please spend a bit of time to formulate a clear question and provide all the information required to answer your question (...you've got more characters here than on Twitter so don't hold back...)

Re: Removing Special Characters

RW9 — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 10:16:22 GMT

Please post a comprehensive example of what you mean. The statement:

balls=compress('12(','(');

Will, for every row, set the value to be 12 as that is what you have told it to do. What is it you want? Maybe:

if findc(balls,"(") then balls=compress(balls,"(");

Don't keep us guessing, test data in the form of a datastep and what you want out!!!

Re: Removing Special Characters

Astounding — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 13:33:10 GMT

A few simple answers will let any one of the responders on this board solve your problem. I apologize if they seem too simple.

Is your data already in a SAS data set?

If so, do you know the names of the variables in the SAS data set?

If so, what is the name of the variable that might contain a left-hand parenthesis that you want to remove?

Are there any other characters (besides a left-hand parenthesis) that you might want to remove?

Re: Removing Special Characters

ballardw — Fri, 17 Aug 2018 15:00:33 GMT

@navinrraj wrote:

but 12 prints entire column

i want print 12 value for paritcular row only

balls=compress('12(','(');

is not working for tat

balls

12

12

12

12

12

12 its print like this

HOW are you "printing"?

"Particular row" how do you identify the "particular row". There is nothing in your (very incomplete) code that restricts this to any specific row.