topic Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange in SAS Programming

Deleting space between two words with prxchange

Caetreviop543 — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 17:22:49 GMT

Some of my variables have a space before the period, like this:

word .word
word .word

I would like them to look like this:

word.word
word.word

I'm trying to use prxchange, but it's not working.

prxchange('s/ \w+ \./\w+\./', -1, variable);

What am I doing wrong??

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

Tom — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 17:45:53 GMT

Your REGEX is searching for periods, but your data has commas.

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

PGStats — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 17:57:42 GMT

Try

's/(\w+) \./\1./'

as the regular expression. \1 repeats the match from the first parenthesis.

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

r_behata — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 18:02:19 GMT

If your are trying to remove a single space followed by a "." try :

data _null_;

want = prxchange('s/\s././', -1, "word .word");

put want =;
run;

26         data _null_;
27         
28         want = prxchange('s/\s././', -1, "word .word");
29         
30         put want =;
31         run;

want=word.word

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

novinosrin — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 18:31:33 GMT

For what it's worth, here is my stab at it

data have;
input var $20.;
cards;
word .word
word .word
;

data want;
 set have;
 want=prxchange('s/(\w+)\s\.(\w+)/$1.$2/', -1, var);
run;

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

Caetreviop543 — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 19:12:49 GMT

Where does it have commas? The variables have a space, and then a period.

Re: Deleting space between two words with prxchange

Caetreviop543 — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 20:04:47 GMT

Thanks! Is the \ before the period to denote meta characters, only required for the first argument ('s/first argument/second argument', -1, variable) in prxchange?