topic Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero. in SAS Programming

Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 09:42:03 GMT

The character variabel CHARVAR have values mostly like:

0178 Adam

0245 Barbara

But there are some values with some leading blanks like:

^^0791 Cathy

^^0437 David

I want to get rid of the blanks.

STRIP(CHARVAR) and LEFT(CHARVAR) doesn´t work.

Is there any special problem with these functions, when the first character after the blanks is a zero?

The data are imported from Excel. I am using SAS Enterprise Guide.6.1.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Patrick — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 10:03:11 GMT

No, there is no such problem. Are you sure you're dealing with blanks or could it be that these are other non-printable white-space characters?

If so then the most efficient way I can think of to get rid of any leading white-space characters would be using a regular expression as done in below code for "want2".

data sample;

length have $20;

have='09'x||'0791 Cathy';

want1=strip(have);

want2=prxchange('s/^\s*//o',1,have);

put have= $hex.;

put want1= $hex.;

put want2= $hex.;

run;

Message was edited by: Patrick Matter fixed the hex format

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:00:23 GMT

Thanks for your answer Patrick.

I have some problems interpreting 's/^\s*//o'. Can you elaborate on that, please.

And shouldn't the "1" in prxchange('s/^\s*//o',1,have) be "-1" if the number of non-printable characters are unknown?

I have no idea of what the possible non-printable characters could be. I used "^" above to indicate blanks.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Patrick — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:25:47 GMT

Use "put <your variable>= $hex.;" in your code. This will show you in the log the hex codes so you can find out what these white-space characters really are.

As for the RegEx ^\s*

^ at the beginning of the string

\s any white-space character

* zero, one or many

And because this RegEx can match only once at the beginning of the string, a '1' should be sufficient.

Message was edited by: Patrick Matter fixed the hex format

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 11:59:50 GMT

You wrote: "Use "put <your variable>= hex.;" in your code.".

This gives:

^^0791 Cathy .

^^0437 David .

in the log, and here my ^^ stands for blanks.

This should indicate that the white-space characters really are blanks. It is very strange then, that the strip function doesn't work.

Where the dots come from I don't know.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

data_null__ — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:04:15 GMT

The DOT come from you leaving off the period after the format HEX in your PUT statement. It should be $HEX. and you may want to include W as in $HEX8.;

attjooo wrote:

Where the dots come from I don't know.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Tom — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:13:52 GMT

You should have values like this is you really used the $HEX. format. Only the '2020' are spaces. The others are other binary codes that might look like spaces when printed.

94 data _null_;

95 x=' 0791 Cathy';

96 put x= $hex. ;

97 x='0000'x || '0791 Cathy';

98 put x= $hex.;

99 x='A020'x || '0791 Cathy';

100 put x= $hex.;

101 x='0909'x || '0791 Cathy';

102 put x= $hex.;

103

104 run;

x=202030373931204361746879

x=000030373931204361746879

x=A02030373931204361746879

x=090930373931204361746879

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Astounding — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:51:52 GMT

If the legitimate characters always begin with a "0", then you shouldn't have to figure out what the extra character is. You could try:

length first $ 1;

first = charvar;

if first ne '0' then charvar = comrpess(charvar, first);

If the first legitimate character might be a nonzero, the problem gets more complex but COMPRESS can probably handle it. There is a third parameter for COMPRESS, for example, that would let you keep all letters and digits and discard everything else.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 12:52:50 GMT

My data above was fake data.

Using $hex. the problematic variable values all starts with

A0203036

and then 34 more digits.

How should I interprete this?

¨'

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Tom — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:10:12 GMT

'A0'x is character that some (particularly Microsoft products) use as a "non-breaking" space. Convert them to a real space and then STRIP() or LEFT() should work for you.

CHARVAR = left(translate(CHARVAR,' ','A0'x));

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 06:06:37 GMT

Thank you Tom. My problem is now solved.

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

Patrick — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 09:41:49 GMT

Then please mark the most suitable answer as "correct" and answers which were helpful as "helpful".

Re: Removing leading blanks when the next character is a zero.

attjooo — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 12:45:19 GMT

I was looking for a button marked "Correct" to press, but I couldn't find any.