topic Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS in SAS Programming

Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

Waby — Wed, 08 May 2019 05:15:30 GMT

I have 4 columns I am trying to concatenate and unconcatenate later

   Var         Samp          Test     Unit     
      A       Sample1     Test1             
      A       Sample2                    kg

I tried the following catx("-", Var, Samp, Test, Unit); which will give me the following and doesn't leave any room for spaces. I would like to concatenate with the space so that I can unconcatenate later.

     New
      A-Sample1-Test1             
      A-Sample2-kg  

     Want 
      A-Sample1-Test1-            
      A-Sample2- -kg

As for unconcatenating, I would try somethig like the following but am unsure how to use the scan function.

data want;
set have;
array var(3) $;
do i = 1 to dim(var);
var[i]=scan(row,i,'-','M');
end;
run;

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

ChrisNZ — Wed, 08 May 2019 04:58:33 GMT

Your code seems fine.

Just add the variable names on the array statement.

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

Waby — Wed, 08 May 2019 05:16:04 GMT

Thanks. I've updated the other part of my question. In the concatenate part, how can I concatenate so that I still retain the spaces? The deliminator skips blanks.

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

Jagadishkatam — Wed, 08 May 2019 06:20:42 GMT

did you try as below

catx(" - ", Var, Samp, Test, Unit);

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

ChrisNZ — Wed, 08 May 2019 06:33:02 GMT

You don't need spaces to parse it back to its initial components.

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

Waby — Wed, 08 May 2019 06:40:36 GMT

I did but thanks for your suggestion. I ended up resolving the issue in the unconcatenate section.

Re: Concatenate and Unconcatenate in SAS

Tom — Wed, 08 May 2019 12:10:48 GMT

The CATX() function will ignore missing (including all blank character values) when building the result. If you want to keep the space for missing values then build the string yourself. For just a few values just list them, for more use some type of DO loop.

string=cat(trim(a),'-',trim(b),'-',trim(c));