topic Re: Carriage Return in a Quote? in SAS Programming

Carriage Return in a Quote?

BCNAV — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:04:31 GMT

Hey all, I have the following:

(case when t1.Line_Number=1 then 
            "The big brown dog jumped over the red fence. Then went to bed" 
            end) AS Special_Instructions;

Is there a special character in SAS to insert a carriage return after the period by the word "fence" ? I would like to be able to export these and similar comments into Excel as labels, but some will need carriage returns. Not sure SAS has a code to enter within the quote that will export a carriage return, or even make a carriage return within the SAS text variable. thanks!

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

AlanC — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:12:37 GMT

Have you tried a '\r' or used the ASCII equivalent ('13'x)?

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

BCNAV — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:44:41 GMT

@AlanC

I am not sure where to place those within my quote. I have tried \r, '\r' to no avail and am unsure how to enter the ascii. Any ideas?

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

Tom — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:53:49 GMT

You can insert any hexcode you want. The hexcode for CR is '0D'x.

(case when t1.Line_Number=1 then 
            'The big brown dog jumped over the red fence.'||'0D'x||'Then went to bed'
            end) AS Special_Instructions;

I also changed the qutoes to single quotes so that you could also insert characters like & and % that would be macro triggers if enclodes in double quotes.

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

AlanC — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:59:24 GMT

I foudn this in another thread. To get the valid hex, use this:

cr=input('0D',$hex2.);

Note: 0D == '13'

A valid SAS statement would be:

x = "Test the carriage return" || cr || right now" ;

See if that helps.

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

RW9 — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 15:05:35 GMT

If you want nice readbale output in excel then using a reporting procedure is the way to go:

ods excel file="c:\xyz.xlsx";
proc report data=have nowd split="~";
  columns _all_;
  define var1 / label="Something here~which needs~Splitting";
...
run;
ods excel close;

Its rarely a good idea to put things in the data which have no purpose other than for reporting (it just makes processing the data harder).

Re: Carriage Return in a Quote?

BCNAV — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 16:04:39 GMT

Tom's response was partially correct. Excel does not honour the carriage return, Word does though. When I used "new line" Excel then honored it (Word as well):

case when t1.Line_Number=1 then 'The big brown dog jumped over the red fence.' ||'0A'x|| 'Then went to bed' end