topic WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not valid. in SAS Programming

WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not valid.

SSG — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 16:31:02 GMT

Hi,

I've imported a csv with dollar values that have $ and commas (e.g. $1,000). This imports as a character variable in SAS 9.4 (which is what I'm using). I'm using a data step and COMPRESS to try to eliminate the commas and $ so I can then convert this to a numeric field. Here's the gist of what I have

data file_name;set file_name;

newvar=compress(oldvar,'$',',');

run; [then in a subsequent data step I convert it to numeric)

This eliminates the $, but the commas remain (i.e. it would now read '1,000'). I also get the following warning:

WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not
valid.

There is no possible way I am the only SAS user with this problem, but I can't seem to find a solution anywhere. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!

Re: WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not valid.

Astounding — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 16:39:35 GMT

If you are wondering why nobody else has posted the question, it's because there's an easier way to solve the problem. You don't need COMPRESS at all. In a DATA step, you could use:

newvar = input(oldvar, dollar16.);

It will read the numerics, and ignore the commas and dollar signs automatically.

But to answer your question, you would need to include the list of characters to remove in a single string:

newvar=compress(oldvar,'$,');

Re: WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not valid.

Reeza — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 16:42:32 GMT

You put both characters in the second parameter.

newvar = compress(oldvar, '$,');

The third parameter is modifiers, please read the documentation. For example putting 'a' as the third parameter would remove all alphabetic variables. I think you could also modify your call to be:

newVar = compress(oldvar, , 'kn');
which would mean keep all digits, underscores.

https://documentation.sas.com/?docsetId=lefunctionsref&docsetTarget=n0fcshr0ir3h73n1b845c4aq58hz.htm&docsetVersion=9.4&locale=en

@SSG wrote:

Hi,

I've imported a csv with dollar values that have $ and commas (e.g. $1,000). This imports as a character variable in SAS 9.4 (which is what I'm using). I'm using a data step and COMPRESS to try to eliminate the commas and $ so I can then convert this to a numeric field. Here's the gist of what I have

data file_name;set file_name;

newvar=compress(oldvar,'$',',');

run; [then in a subsequent data step I convert it to numeric)

This eliminates the $, but the commas remain (i.e. it would now read '1,000'). I also get the following warning:

WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not
valid.

There is no possible way I am the only SAS user with this problem, but I can't seem to find a solution anywhere. What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance!

Re: WARNING: In a call to the COMPRESS function or routine, the modifier "," not valid.

SSG — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 17:46:18 GMT

Well, I'd tried dollar8. before I went down this road and I got an error indicating dollar8. was an invalid format; but for some reason dollar16. worked. Thanks!