topic Re: %scan not working in SAS Programming

%scan not working

thanikondharish — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:13:57 GMT

%let name=ABCD efgh,ijkl mnop,qrst;

%put. %scan(&name,1, ,);

How to derive first delimiter string see below..

ABCD efgh

Re: %scan not working

Patrick — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:36:22 GMT

%let name=ABCD efgh,ijkl mnop,qrst;
%put %scan(%nrbquote(&name),1,%nrbquote(,));

Re: %scan not working

Ksharp — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 11:33:18 GMT

%let name=ABCD efgh,ijkl mnop,qrst;

%put %scan(%bquote(&name),1,%(,));

Re: %scan not working

Quentin — Wed, 11 Sep 2019 13:05:41 GMT

@Ksharp I think you're missing the STR. As written:

%scan(%bquote(&name),1,%(,));

would treat four characters as delimiters: % ( ) ,

It works because the () are enough to hide the comma from the macro processor during the macro call. But if the string has % or () in it, those characters will be delimiters.

1 %let name=ABCD% ef(gh,ijkl m)nop,qrst;
2 %put %scan(%bquote(&name),1,%(,));
ABCD

But with %STR(), it treats only one character as a delimiter: ,

3 %put %scan(%bquote(&name),1,%str(,));
ABCD% ef(gh

Re: %scan not working

Ksharp — Thu, 12 Sep 2019 10:52:36 GMT

Yeah. I am sure I write %STR ,

%put %scan(%bquote(&name),1,%str(,));

But I don't know why it would appear this. Maybe this forum eat 'STR' .