topic COMPRESS in SAS Programming

COMPRESS

rawindar — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:32:05 GMT

name=j** ney

in the above data value there is a two * are there after J.Using compress we can remove this *.But i need to remove only 1 *.How can i write the code.

COMPRESS

Hoz — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 07:50:03 GMT

How about use "prxchange".

name="j** ney";

txt = prxchange('s/\*\*/*/',-1,name);

put txt=;

Best Regards,

COMPRESS

Keith — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:14:57 GMT

I agree with Hoz, prxchange is the way to do this. A slight modification to Hoz's code will replace any number of consecutive * to a single *.

txt = prxchange('s/\*+/*/',-1,name);

COMPRESS

Patrick — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:57:35 GMT

Using a regular expression with prxchange() is for sure a very powerful way of modifying a string.

Considering that it's such a simple text pattern and the question is asked in the "Getting started" forum using a function like TRANSTRN() is also acceptable.

data _null_;

myVariable='name=j** ney';

myVariable=TRANSTRN(myVariable,'**','*');

put myVariable=;

run;