topic Remove null value from CLOB data with spl char. in SAS Programming

Remove null value from CLOB data with spl char.

Abraham — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 07:16:59 GMT

Hello Everyone

How to find records with only special characters (except comma, hyphen, fullstop) in a variable (splchar) with CLOB datatype.

But the main problem I faced is that the program captures null records along with my requirement. When I use the program (where schar is not null) to exclude null value, its not working.

Can I use any other function like byte (). Please help me.

proc sql;

create table abc

as select compbl(splchar) from table1; quit;

data abc;

schar = compress(compress(splchar,"'-,.", 'n')); run;

data abc;

set abc;

where schar is not null; run;

Re: Remove null value from CLOB data with spl char.

ArtC — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:09:11 GMT

Your second step does not have a SET statement consequently the data set WORK.ABC will be replaced with a single observation.

You may also find that the functions ANYPUNCT, NOTPUNCT, FIND, and FINDC can be helpful in these types of searches.

Re: Remove null value from CLOB data with spl char.

Patrick — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 10:14:17 GMT

SAS doesn't have a data type "CLOB". So in the moment the CLOB is "moved" to SAS it's a character variable with a max. length of 32KB. If your CLOB potentially contains more than 32K then you need to split it up into several SAS variables (it's the same with PL/SQL).

No more sure how this "splitting up" is done but I know that it's documented for SAS so this is just about Googling.

So once in SAS your question is: How to find special characters in a SAS character variable. Art mentioned some methods. Other ways are: use compress() with the switch for special characters but exclude the ones you accept - and then use a length function on the resulting string and if it's '0' you've got only special characters. Another way would be to use a Regular Expression together with one of SAS' PRX...() functions (several options here).