topic Re: removing a character from a string in SAS Programming

removing a character from a string

hein68 — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 15:43:47 GMT

Hello. What is the easiest way to:

remove the " character from a character variables values?
remove the ' character from a character variables values?

Thanks!

Re: removing a character from a string

Reeza — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 15:44:32 GMT

COMPRESS() function to remove specific characters.

Re: removing a character from a string

maguiremq — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 16:24:16 GMT

We need more information here. What exactly are we looking at? As @Reeza said, you can remove things with COMPRESS. This example shows how to only keep (k) alphabetical characters (a) and spaces (s).

data have;
x = 'This "is" a great string';
y = "This 'is' a great string";
run;

data want;
	set have;
		x_no_double = compress(x,,"kas");
		y_no_single = compress(x,,"kas");
run;

Obs	x	y	x_no_double	y_no_single
1	This "is" a great string	This 'is' a great string	This is a great string	This is a great string

Re: removing a character from a string

Reeza — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 21:46:17 GMT

So you have no other punctuation in your strings?

Try it with this as your input data and ensure it meets your needs.

data have;
x = 'This, "is" a great string!!';
y = "This 'is' a great-string!" ;
run;