topic Re: To select observations containing alphabets in SAS Programming

To select observations containing alphabets

AKHILA — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 09:23:42 GMT

I have a dataset like
Id name
1 negative
2 45
3 1E
4 positive
5 24

I want to derive a new variable 'Flag' in which the values having alphabets should be ' '(missing character value) and no change for others.like,
1
2 45
3
4
5 24

Someone pls help..
Thanks

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

RW9 — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 09:29:25 GMT

Something like:

data want;
  set have;
  if lengthn(comrpess(name," ","d"))=0 then name_derived=compress(name," ","kd");
run;

Not tested as you have not provided test data in the form of a datastep (and not here to type in test data!).

What this does is check the length when numbers are removed, if there is nothing but numbers, then keep only them. Compress is described in the docs:

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000212246.htm

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

AKHILA — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 09:36:00 GMT

Its working what to do if i want decimal digits also like 4.2 , 1.8 etc

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 10:11:03 GMT

As already requested, POST EXAMPLE DATA IN A DATA STEP!!

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

RW9 — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 10:12:24 GMT

data want;
  set have;
  if lengthn(comrpess(name,".","d"))=0 then name_derived=compress(name,".","kd");
run;

Add the dot in. Is it that you want a numeric value? If so:

data have;
  a="123"; output;
  a="1.45"; output;
  a="XYZ"; output;
run;

data want;
  set have;
  if lengthn(compress(a,".","d"))=0 then b=input(a,best.);
run;

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

Astounding — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 11:13:11 GMT

What should happen when NAME contains blanks such as "7 11"

I'm guessing that should be removed. In that case, you can try:

if input( name, ?? 32.) > . then flag = name;

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

Sathish_jammy — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 12:22:37 GMT

The give code will drop alphabets and spaces, only contains numeric(float datatype as well)

data want(drop = YourVariable);

set have;

NewVariable = input(compress(YourVariable,'1234567890.','k'),best12.);

run;

Re: To select observations containing alphabets

RW9 — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 12:33:18 GMT

Unfortunately that doesn't match the required output (otherwise it would have been mentioned):

data have;
  input yourvariable $;
datalines;
negative
45
1E
positive
24
;
run;


data want (drop=yourvariable);
  set have; 
  newvariable=input(compress(yourvariable,'1234567890.','k'),best12.);
run;

See row 3.