topic Re: Delete the last few character in variable name in SAS Programming

Delete the last few character in variable name

hhchenfx — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 14:18:43 GMT

Hi,

I have a dataset where a number of variables end in "_2019".

I would like to remove the suffix.

The problem is that the name has multiple _

Any help is very much appreciated?

HHCFX

data have;

input id_ab_x var_1 s_01_03_2019 xy_2_05_2019;

datalines;

1 2 1 1

2 2 3 4

;run;

Re: Delete the last few character in variable name

PaigeMiller — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 14:32:59 GMT

@hhchenfx wrote:

Hi,

I have a dataset where a number of variables end in "_2019".

I would like to remove the suffix.

The problem is that the name has multiple _

Any help is very much appreciated?

HHCFX

data have;

input id_ab_x var_1 s_01_03_2019 xy_2_05_2019;

datalines;

1 2 1 1

2 2 3 4

;run;

I'm not sure I understand the problem. In your code, you can simply delete the parts you don't want. In bulk, you can delete the text _2019 from wherever it is found, using the Edit->Replace menu command.

If your problem is really that you have existing data sets with dozens/hundreds/thousands of variable names that you need to change (which is certainly not what you stated), then we'd need to know a lot more about the problem. And we'd also need to know if you are delete only "_2019" from the variable name, or if you want to delete the LAST text after the last underscore (and delete that last underscore as well). In other words, we need an exact problem description clearly delineating what needs to be deleted.

Re: Delete the last few character in variable name

hhchenfx — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 15:07:55 GMT

Thanks for asking.

I have new data each day and there are 30+ variables ending with _2019.

Names are different from time to time so I need to clear that part by SAS.

HHC

Re: Delete the last few character in variable name

PaigeMiller — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 15:14:40 GMT

proc contents data=have out=_contents_ noprint;
run;
proc sql noprint;
    select cats(name,'=',tranwrd(name,'_2019','')) into :renames 
        separated by ' ' from _contents_ where find(name,'_2019')>0;
quit;
%put &=renames;

proc datasets library=work nolist;
    modify have;
    rename &renames;
    delete _contents_;
run;
quit;

This code will fail if the text '_2019' appears elsewhere (not at the end of the variable name) in the variable names.

Re: Delete the last few character in variable name

hhchenfx — Thu, 28 Mar 2019 15:55:38 GMT

Thanks a lot for your code, PaigeMiller!

HHC

Re: Delete the last few character in variable name

BlairWhitty — Thu, 28 May 2020 16:04:29 GMT

Hi,

I am working on a similar issues, however I have a character string '_v2' that appears at the end of the variable name for some variables, but in the middle for others. Is there a way to modify this code to remove that string from anywhere in the variable name.

For example I have
id_info_v2
diary_type_v2____1 - diary_type_v2___4

Thanks!