topic Re: macro for searching and replacing a ( in SAS Programming

macro for searching and replacing a (

rramcharan — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 18:44:41 GMT

Is there a quick and easy way of searching and replacing a ( with an _

eg. %let x=Premium_Loans-44014(1);

%let y=%sysfunc(tranwrd(&x,"(","_"));

Rob

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

ballardw — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:09:37 GMT

Is this what you are looking for?

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

rramcharan — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:11:37 GMT

I can't see the code you are suggesting...sorry

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

Astounding — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:17:26 GMT

Once you replace "(" with "_" do you also want to remove the ")" ?

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

rramcharan — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:18:17 GMT

yes

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

Astounding — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:32:07 GMT

Untested but should be workable:

%let part1 = %scan(%superq(macrovar), 1, %str(%)%());

%let part2 = %scan(%superq(macrovar), 2, %str(%)%());

The pieces in red are the way to refer to parentheses within the %STR function.

If you are certain that there will always be parentheses, you could simply use:

%let result = &part1._&part2;

If there might be parentheses just some of the time you would need to add a macro to be able to use %if / %then:

%if %length(&part2)=0 %then %let result = &part1;

%else %let result = &part1._&part2;

It's a little clumsy (and untested at this point), but it's difficult for macro language to use parentheses as part of the syntax since they need to be treated as both text and as significant characters.

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

Reeza — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 19:41:59 GMT

Two other functions that may be useful:

SCAN() with () as the delimters to extract the portion before, within or after.

COMPRESS() which can remove the characters indicated and return the string without the characters.

@rramcharan wrote:

Hi

Is there a quick and easy way of searching and replacing a ( with an _

eg. %let x=Premium_Loans-44014(1);

%let y=%sysfunc(tranwrd(&x,"(","_"));

Rob

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

kiranv_ — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 20:03:28 GMT

you can prxchange. \( meaning escape starting of paerenthesis and \) is closing of parenthesis (\d) is meant to capture a number.

so \((\d)\) means replace (\d) capture d (digit) and replace () with _

%let x=%str(Premium_Loans-44014(1));
%put &x;
%let y=%sysfunc(prxchange(s/\((\d)\)/_\1/,1, &x));
%put &y; 


output is 

 73         %let x= Premium_Loans-44014(1);
 74         %put &x;
 Premium_Loans-44014(1)
 75         %let y=%sysfunc(prxchange(s/\((\d)\)/_\1/,1, &x));
 76         %put &y;
 Premium_Loans-44014_1

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

Tom — Mon, 01 Oct 2018 20:36:33 GMT

If you always have the pattern xxxxx(xxx) then %SCAN() is probably the easiest.

160  %let x=Premium_Loans-44014(1);
161  %let y=%scan(&x,1,())_%scan(&x,2,());
162  %put &=y;
Y=Premium_Loans-44014_1

Re: macro for searching and replacing a (

Ksharp — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 10:41:44 GMT

%let x=Premium_Loans-44014(1);
%put &x;
%let y=%sysfunc(translate(%bquote(&x),%str(_),%str(%()));
%put &y;