topic Create a space in a character string where there is a capital letter in SAS Programming

Create a space in a character string where there is a capital letter

Jamie_H — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 11:58:52 GMT

I have some data on employment types but it's in a slightly odd format and would love some assistance fixing this.

The data has no spaces in it, but does (mostly) have a capital letter designating the start of the second or nth work. I would like to create a new variable that takes this employment type and inserts a space where it sees a capital letter.

EG;

Have

EmpType

SteelIndustry

ClothingTrade

Want

NewEmpType

Steel Industry

Clothing Trade

One slight stumbling block is that there are some words that have been capitalised that should remain that way and not have spaces inserted.

EG; GovernmentUSA = Government USA. LTDTrader = LTD Trader.

Finally, there are some odd ones in here like Universityprofessor. Now I know what that should be by looking at it, but if anyone has any suggestions as to how to fix scenarios like that i'd be very impressed!

Thanks

Re: Create a space in a character string where there is a capital letter

Ksharp — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 12:53:25 GMT

That is very complicated. You need get a word list dictionary.

data have;
input have $20.;
want=strip(compbl(prxchange('s/([A-Z][a-z]+)/ $1 /',-1,have)));
cards;
EmpType
SteelIndustry
ClothingTrade 
GovernmentUSA 
LTDTrader 
;

Re: Create a space in a character string where there is a capital letter

Jamie_H — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 13:27:04 GMT

This works great, thank you very much!

Re: Create a space in a character string where there is a capital letter

ballardw — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 21:24:03 GMT

Since you are inserting characters you may need to create a new variable that is longer than your existing one. If any of your current values are exactly the defined length of the variable then when you insert a character in the middle the end of the value will get truncated.