TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

AlexCarey — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 06:50:45 GMT

Hello SAS Community:

I have a dataset with a character variable, I'll call it "char_var". If I explore one of "char_var"'s observations, the value for "char_var" appears as 'hello', and when I display it with PROC PRINT, it looks just like 'hello' with no trailing or leading blanks. When I apply the LENGTH function to the "char_var" variable however and assign that result to a variable I named "len", the value of "len" is 10. Even when I apply the TRIM and STRIP functions, separately each to "char_var", first, before applying the LENGTH function, and assigning the results to separate variables "len_trim", and "len_strip", respectively, the value stored in each of these variables is also 10.

I guess there is some kind of non-printing character that is not getting removed? The reason I need to get just the 'printable' characters isolated is because the "char_var" column is supposed to serve as a "foreign key" for another table (data set), and since I can't reduce the value of the "char_var" down to the length of just the printable characters, which would be 5, I can't match the value correctly with the 'hello' value in the joining table.

I tried using the NOTPRINT and INDEX, FIND functions as well to see if I could locate these 'invisible' characters, but I didn't have any success.

Any ideas on how I can strip these extra characters from the "char_var" variables' value to reduce its length to 5 (the length of the printable characters)? Or perhaps another strategy to be able to link the tables on this variable, despite the mismatching lengths?

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

andreas_lds — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 07:20:31 GMT

Please have a look at https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/TRIM-and-STRIP-function-not-removing-white-space-for-character/m-p/785955

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

Astounding — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 07:20:58 GMT

Print the variable using the $hex20. format and you will see what's in there.

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

ChrisNZ — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 09:35:29 GMT

It's probably not a white space. One way to remove non-printable characters is to use the compress function with the wk or the s modifier.

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TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?

Re: TRIM and STRIP function not removing white space for character variable, PROC SQL?