topic how to align values when concatenating variables of different lengthes in SAS Programming

how to align values when concatenating variables of different lengthes

knveraraju91 — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 19:42:40 GMT

Dear,

In my data I need to concatenate four variables. The output should have all values aligned in all rows to display in table. Please suggest. Thank you

output needed;

31(25) 37(14) 80.6 8.3

11(2) 12(7) 37.8 8.2

output getting

31(25) 37(14) 80.6 8.3

11(2) 12(7) 37.8 8.2

    data hav;
           input c1 $1-6 c2 $8-13 r1 $15-18 r2 $21-23 ;
           datalines;
31(25) 37(14) 80.6 58.3
11(2)  12(7)  37.8 18.2
           ;
           
           data want;
           set hav;
           tot=c1||"    "||c2||"    "||r1||"    "||r2;
           run;

Re: how to align values when concatenating variables of different lengthes

Tom — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 20:34:40 GMT

How are you printing the output? If you use a proportional font then the spaces will use less width then the digits or other characters.

Re: how to align values when concatenating variables of different lengthes

ballardw — Thu, 02 Dec 2021 03:50:04 GMT

Alignment is one of the reasons I do not create variables containing multiple values. With a separate variable I can use style overrides and custom formats to display columns in a tabular report, such as from Proc Report or Tabulate that aligns and appears to be single values to people without causing all the headaches of data maintenance that such composite valued variables can cause.