topic Re: Adding dashes into a string in SAS Programming

Adding dashes into a string

smg3141 — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 19:53:00 GMT

Hello,

I'm trying to add dashes in the middle of a string of social security numbers. For example, 123456789 -> 123-45-6789.

I've been trying to use the cat and substr commands, but I don't think I'm totally understanding how the substr function works. I'm still new to SAS.

data want;
set have;
length ssn_dash $11;
ssn_dash = ssn;
ssn_dash = cat(substr(ssn_dash,1,3), '-', substr(ssn_dash,3));
ssn_dash = cat(substr(ssn_dash,1,6), '-', substr(ssn_dash,6));
run;

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Re: Adding dashes into a string

PGStats — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 20:11:54 GMT

Assuming ssn is a character string variable:

ssn_dash = catx("-", substr(ssn,1,3), substr(ssn,4,2), substr(ssn,6));

Re: Adding dashes into a string

jimbarbour — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 02:52:04 GMT

You were very close. The only adjustment that you would need would be to do add 1 to the last argument of your second substring on each line:

Then you get just what you were after:

However, that said, I think it's typically better to just do it all in one line as @PGStats suggests. Notice also that he/she uses CATX instead of just CAT. The CATX function puts a value in between each of the subsequent specified values so that you don't have to code '-' multiple times. Nice function to know about. I also find CATS to be useful. CATS is the about the same as CAT except that it executes a STRIP function on each term. CATS would be like coding CAT(STRIP(Var1), STRIP(Var2), STRIP(Var3)). Very useful in my opinion.

Jim

Re: Adding dashes into a string

Ksharp — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 12:06:04 GMT

data _null_;
x=123456789;
y=put(x,ssn.);
put x= / y=;
run;