topic Re: Tranlate didn't work in semicolon? in SAS Programming

Tranlate didn't work in semicolon?

ybz12003 — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:24:13 GMT

Hello,

I ran a code to change the 'forwardslash' and 'semicolon' to 'comma.' I found all of the columns are working, except one cell is '3 CRANIOTOMIES; HYPOSPADIAS.'

Name=strip(compbl(translate(Disease,',','/;')));

The 'semicolon' between ''3 CRANIOTOMIES' and 'HYPOSPADIAS' didn't change to 'comma', but 'space' instead. I can't figure out why, and how to fix it. Please help, thank you.

Re: Tranlate didn't work in semicolon?

ballardw — Wed, 19 Aug 2020 16:48:22 GMT

If you want to change both / and ; to , you would use

Name=strip(compbl(translate(Disease,',,','/;')));

The number of characters in the "to" list have to match the number in the "from" list. Otherwise you get "default" .

From the documentation:

Under Windows, you do not have to specify a pair of arguments that consist of a to argument and a from argument. However, if you do not use pairs, you must supply a comma as a placeholder. If to has fewer characters than from, TRANSLATE changes the extra from characters to blanks. If to has more characters than from, TRANSLATE ignores the extra to characters.

Re: Tranlate didn't work in semicolon?

ybz12003 — Thu, 20 Aug 2020 14:50:07 GMT

Thank you!