topic Re: PRX function usage issue in SAS Programming

PRX function usage issue

Shmuel — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 12:54:38 GMT

I'm trying to learn the PRX functions.

I want to extract the area_code from a given phone number.

Attached is my log showing the code and the result I got - not fitting

to the expected area code '03'.

73         data _null_;
 74             length area_code $3;
 75             phone = '03-6789021';
 76             prx_id = prxparse("/\(d+\)D/");
 77             pos = prxmatch(prx_ID, phone);
 78             area_code = prxposn(prx_id, 1, phone);
 79             put prx_id= pos= area_code=;
 80         run;
 
 prx_id=1 pos=0 area_code= 
 NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
       real time           0.01 seconds
       cpu time            0.01 seconds

The expression should look for any number of digits until first non digit character:

Please fix my code and if possible some explanation to my error.

Re: PRX function usage issue

s_lassen — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 14:17:13 GMT

The problem is with the escape character ("\"). "\(" and "\)" look for the actual parantheses in the expression. And "d+" looks for the letter "d", repeated one or more times.

Try "/(\d+)\D/" instead.

Re: PRX function usage issue

Shmuel — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 15:08:50 GMT

@s_lassen , thanks very much, it works as expected.

Looking at the solution helped me to understand better the logic of creating the right expression.