topic Identifying the String and replacing in Quotes in SAS Programming

Identifying the String and replacing in Quotes

keen_sas — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 13:25:16 GMT

Hi All,

I have a dataset with variable HAVE and another variable Replace consisting of some text to be replaced from HAVE to new value present in the same variable,
Old represent the value present in the HAVE variable and New is the value to be replaced in the same variabe HAVE. This has to be done dynamically by selecting the text from replace variable without manual checking.
I am trying to find the text in Old using FIND,SCAN,SUBSTRs function and then replacing the value with TRANWRD fucntion. Is there any direct approach/function/short cut to do this in much simpler way. The output variable is WANT for reference.

Have	Replace	Want
Benchmark indices registered recovery from the day's low point.	(old="low", new="high")	Benchmark indices registered strong recovery from the day's high point.
Completes inspection at Factory	(old="at", new="in")	Completes inspection in Factory
Patient; status; cardiac arrest	(old=";",new=',')	Patient, status, cardiac arrest

Re: Identifying the String and replacing in Quotes

RW9 — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 14:38:12 GMT

First I would suggest fixing the replace column, it will just make your code longer if you have it all in one. Have two columns:

FIND REPLACE

low high

Will make things easier.

Second, should it replace all occurrences, what about casing? What about low in a word, e.g. below?

Tranwrd is probably the simplest method, e.g:

want=tranwrd(have," low "," high ");

I put spaces in so as to get only th word, not be"low" for instance.

Re: Identifying the String and replacing in Quotes

Amir — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 13:33:59 GMT

The points raised by @RW9 will need to be addressed, but as the question is presented the following might help.

/* set up data */
data have;
   infile datalines truncover;
   input have    $char70.;
   input replace $char30.;

   datalines4;
Benchmark indices registered recovery from the day's low point.
(old="low", new="high")
Completes inspection at Factory
(old="at", new="in")
Patient; status; cardiac arrest
(old=";",new=',')
That"s ok
(old='"',new="'")
This 'dataline' uses quotes
(old="'",new='"')
;;;;

data want;
   set have;

   length find_str repl_str $ 8;

   /* get 'old' string and remove quotes */
   find_str = strip(tranwrd(scanq(replace,1,','),'(old=',''));
   find_str = dequote(find_str);

   /* get 'new' string and remove quotes */
   repl_str = strip(tranwrd(scanq(replace,2,','),'new=',''));
   repl_str = substr(repl_str,1,length(repl_str) - 1);
   repl_str = dequote(repl_str);

   /* perform replace */
   want = tranwrd(have,strip(find_str),strip(repl_str));
run;