topic Re: Subtract numbers from character in SAS Programming

Subtract numbers from character

cphd — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 05:50:15 GMT

Hi all,

I have a phone number variable that has '-' in the middle. I would like to take numbers only.

This is what I want.

Phone num_phone (what I want)

111-222-3333 1112223333

111-222-4444 1112224444

111-2225555 1112225555

Thank you in advance.

Re: Subtract numbers from character

PeterClemmensen — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 06:20:17 GMT

data have;
input Phone :$20.;
datalines;
111-222-3333
111-222-4444
111-2225555 
;

data want;
    set have;
    NewPhone = compress(phone, '-');
run;

Re: Subtract numbers from character

ed_sas_member — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 08:14:44 GMT

Hi @cphd

Here are two methods to achieve this:

data want;
    set have;
    NewPhone = prxchange('s/-//',-1,phone);
run;

data want;
    set have;
    NewPhone = compress(phone, '-');
run;

Best,

Re: Subtract numbers from character

Astounding — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 22:58:50 GMT

Just in case your data contains other special characters such as parentheses, I would use:

NewPhone = compress(phone,,'kd');

As a third parameter, KD = Keep Digits

Re: Subtract numbers from character

ballardw — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 16:41:03 GMT

@cphd wrote:

Hi all,

I have a phone number variable that has '-' in the middle. I would like to take numbers only.

This is what I want.

Phone num_phone (what I want)

111-222-3333 1112223333

111-222-4444 1112224444

111-2225555 1112225555

Thank you in advance.

By any chance to you have international phone numbers in you data?

I worked with a process that did this to "clean" phone numbers and then found that certain international phone numbers with different number construction would fit in the US 10 digit dial string but were now considered to be in US because the first two digits were the country code and the remaining eight were the number within the country.

So if you do not know if you have international numbers you might check to see if you have any dialing strings with a dash in the third position.