topic Re: Remove blank spaces from a Number in SAS Programming

Remove blank spaces from a Number

KC_16 — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:12:37 GMT

Hi,

I have a variable (Tel_No) which is number of which has blank spaces such as 14755 555 898 or 01478 658458.

Any idea how I remove the blanks from this please?

Re: Remove blank spaces from a Number

PeterClemmensen — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:16:31 GMT

Is the variable actually numeric? Or is it character? I suspect the latter

data _null_;
    Tel_No    = '14755 555 898';
    newTel_No = compress(Tel_No);
    put newTel_No=;
run;

Result;

newTel_No=14755555898

Re: Remove blank spaces from a Number

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 12:20:45 GMT

This is stored as character, as it should be. Telephone numbers are not used for calculations and can easily exceed SAS numeric precision.

Use the compress() function to remove unwanted characters (e.g. blanks) from strings.

Re: Remove blank spaces from a Number

ballardw — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 18:36:56 GMT

I once upon a time worked for company where we received lots of phone numbers for client contact. We had process that did what you request. Then had lots of "wrong number" or "why are you calling me, I've never had any contact with Company X". It turned out the process of "cleaning" the phone numbers by removing blanks had resulted in non-US country code values being combined with shorter than US phone numbers to create dialing strings that looked like they were in a US state.

So you may want to determine what significance any of those spaces might have before removing them.