topic Re: where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton? in SAS Programming

where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton?

novinosrin — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 18:19:46 GMT

First off, my apologies for the lame question perhaps lack of sleep, tiredness or whatever.

Ok question, from sas function documentation

charlist

specifies an optional character expression that initializes a list of characters. This list determines which characters are used as the delimiters that separate words. The following rules apply:

By default, all characters in charlist are used as delimiters.
If you specify the K modifier in the modifier argument, then all characters that are not in charlist are used as delimiters.

Tip:	You can add more characters to charlist by using other modifiers.

where is the charlist list in sas documentation? This irks me

Re: where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton?

VDD — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 18:36:36 GMT

I have found a few in SAS help but never found a full list.

Re: where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton?

PaigeMiller — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 19:09:41 GMT

http://documentation.sas.com/?cdcId=pgmsascdc&cdcVersion=9.4_3.3&docsetId=lefunctionsref&docsetTarget=p0jshdjy2z9zdzn1h7k90u99lyq6.htm&locale=en

You specify the charlist, any characters you want.

Re: where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton?

novinosrin — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 19:40:20 GMT

Thank you @PaigeMiller That's the doc i needed. Hmm the answer i wanted was right there viz.

Using Default Delimiters in ASCII and EBCDIC Environments

If you use the SCAN function with only two arguments, then the default delimiters depend on whether your computer uses ASCII or EBCDIC characters.

If your computer uses ASCII characters, the default delimiters are as follows:

blank ! $ % & ( ) * + , - . / ; < ^ |

In ASCII environments that do not contain the ^ character, the SCAN function uses the ~ character instead.
If your computer uses EBCDIC characters, then the default delimiters are as follows:

blank ! $ % & ( ) * + , - . / ; < ¬ | ¢

If you use the modifier argument without specifying any characters as delimiters, then the only delimiters that are used are delimiters that are defined by the modifier argument. In this case, the lists of default delimiters for ASCII and EBCDIC environments are not used. In other words, modifiers add to the list of delimiters that are explicitly specified by the charlist argument. Modifiers do not add to the list of default modifiers.

Re: where is the charlist list in sas documentation for SCAN funciton?

novinosrin — Sun, 21 Oct 2018 19:44:42 GMT

And why the problem arose was thanks to this :

when i desired (1995)

1013 data _null_;
1014 k='Toy Story (1995)';
1015 k1=scan(k,-1);
1016 put k1=;
1017 run;

k1=1995

and it's pretty apparent, the explicit charlist specification was needed

data _null_;
k='Toy Story (1995)';
k1=scan(k,-1,' ');
put k1=;
run;