topic Re: Replace the line breaks from Excel file with prxchange in SAS Programming

Replace the line breaks from Excel file with prxchange

SASdevAnneMarie — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 15:53:39 GMT

Hello,

I import an excel file, the data has the line breaks, so, sometimes ,in my sas data I have the multiple spaces.

I want to replace this spaces by ^n but my code doesn't work:

OBJECTIVES2=prxchange('s/(^|\b)\s{2,}(\b|$)/^n/oi',-1,OBJECTIVES);

Maybe you know some other options to do that?

Thank you for your help!

Best regards,

Marie

ChrisNZ — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 22:49:18 GMT

A space means \b is matched, so I am unsure what the intent of your expression is.

> I want to replace this spaces by ^n

Like this? It's the same as your expression.

OBJECTIVES2=prxchange('s/\s{2,}/^n/',-1,OBJECTIVES);

Patrick — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 04:38:13 GMT

I would remove the line breaks from your data. That's only going to create problems "somewhere".

Below RegEx replaces one or multiple consecutive whitespace characters with a single blank.

OBJECTIVES2=OBJECTIVES;
OBJECTIVES2=prxchange('s/\s+/ /oi',-1,OBJECTIVES2);

SASdevAnneMarie — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 07:34:38 GMT

Great! It works! Thank you!