topic Re: Trailing blank in SAS Programming

Trailing blank

amol2939 — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:13:48 GMT

I have an
data have;
Input result $;
Data lines;
Abc
Def
Hjkkk
Lkhhhh
;
Run;
I want to remove the trailing blanks
And want to see in which observation the blank have been removed

Re: Trailing blank

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:16:26 GMT

You cannot remove trailing blanks from character variables, as they are always padded with blanks to the defined length.

Re: Trailing blank

Patrick — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:23:13 GMT

SAS character variables are fixed length (type CHAR). If you just use $ without a length specification in your input statement then the variable will become character with a length of 8.

As it's fixed length there are always trailing blanks unless your string is already 8 characters.

So: Removing trailing blanks is not possible but if you just want to know how long your strings actually are then you can use the length() or lengthn() function.

data have;
  input result $;
  lenOfString=length(result);
  datalines;
Abc
Def
Hjkkk
Lkhhhh
;
proc print;
run;

Re: Trailing blank

JerryV — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 14:10:36 GMT

Building upon Kurt's and Patrick's responses. The below code shows what they have said. Now you can compare lenOfString and columnLengthOf_result to see when strip() does something.

data have;
input result $;
retain columnLengthOf_result 0;
if _n_=1 then columnLengthOf_result=vlength(result);
lenOfString=length(result);
Original_result='(' || result || ')';
Stripped_result='(' || strip(result) ||')';

datalines;
Abc
Def
Hjkkk
Lkhhhh
;;;;

Re: Trailing blank

ballardw — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 15:03:09 GMT

Please describe what you are doing that "trailing blanks" is causing problems or affecting your analysis.