topic Remove Blank Spaces in SAS Programming

Remove Blank Spaces

shlomiohana — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 15:46:46 GMT

hello,

To create xml I write the following code:

data _null_;

     set work.report end=eofl;
     file "&OUTFILE./&FILE_NAME." NOPRINT encoding="utf-8";
     by bankCode;

     if _n_ =1 then

           do;
                put '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>';
                PUT '<currentDate>'currentDate'</currentDate>';
                PUT '<factorCode>'factorCode'</factorCode>';
                PUT '<monthReport>'monthReport'</monthReport>';
                put '<banks>';
           end;

                   if first.bankCode then
           do;
                put '<bank bankCode="' bankCode'">';
           end;

     put '<branch branchId="' branchId'">';
     put '<cityId>'cityId'</cityId>';
     put '<cashierDesk>'cashierDesk'</cashierDesk>';
     put '<coreBankBranchId>'coreBankBranchId'</coreBankBranchId>';
     put '<cashDepositBag>'cashDepositBag'</cashDepositBag>';
     put '<nonAtmDepositMachine>' nonAtmDepositMachine'</nonAtmDepositMachine>';
     put '</branch>';

     if last.bankCode then
           do;
                put '</bank>';
           end;

     if eofl then
           do;
                put '</banks>';
                put '</cashServicesReport>';
           end;
run;

I want to remove blank spaces as shown by the arrows in the image, all fields come out with spaces.

Thanks.

Re: Remove Blank Spaces

svh — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 16:36:27 GMT

I've run into a similar problem, and I need to use a +(-1) notation in the PUT step. See if this helps:

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/How-to-remove-trailing-blanks-when-PUT-statement-resolves-for/td-p/190655

Re: Remove Blank Spaces

FreelanceReinh — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 17:40:35 GMT

Hello @shlomiohana,

I'd like to add that this is expected behavior of list output and explained in section How List Output Is Spaced of the PUT Statement: List documentation. As has been suggested, a column pointer control can be used to avoid the unwanted blanks (which do not occur with formatted output).

To abbreviate the repeating pattern in your code, you could write a little macro:

%macro item(var);
  put "<&var>" &var +(-1) "</&var>";
%mend item;

Application:

data _null_;
set sashelp.class(obs=3);
%item(name)
%item(age)
run;

Result:

<name>Alfred</name>
<age>14</age>
<name>Alice</name>
<age>13</age>
<name>Barbara</name>
<age>13</age>