topic Re: Concatenation with array in SAS Programming

Concatenation with array

sanjay1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:52:18 GMT

Hi SAS Experts,

I have a data with name and strings, I want to add all the strings(col1,col2,etc..) into one column. The number of strings are not fixed they may be more or less sometimes. I can do this with catx but do not know how to achieve this with array. Below is my data set. Please Guide.

data a;
input name$ col1$ col2$ col3$ col4$;
DATALINES;
Harry abc dcd vgd bvd
peter cvc fgf ghg ghh
John fgg ftg uty gfdg
sheyala fgf jty fhf fgr
;
run;

here is my code:

data test;
length result $50;
set a;
result=Compress(catx(';',of col1-col4),'0D0A'x);
run;

But the number of strings are not fixed.

Thanks & Regards,

Sanjay

Re: Concatenation with array

RW9 — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 09:57:35 GMT

Are they all called colX if so you don't need an array:

result=catx(',',of col:);

Note the colon after the col prefix.

If they are not all called that then:

array tmp{*} col1 abc def;
result=catx(',',of tmp:);

Re: Concatenation with array

sanjay1 — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:05:08 GMT

Hi RW9,

Can you elaborate how to use this with array.

Re: Concatenation with array

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 11:12:58 GMT

@sanjay1 wrote:

Hi RW9,

Can you elaborate how to use this with array.

There's nothing to elaborate. @RW9's post contains a complete example.

Re: Concatenation with array

ballardw — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 14:33:00 GMT

@sanjay1 wrote:

Hi RW9,

Can you elaborate how to use this with array.

Use "of arrayname(*)" where your are currently using "of col1-col4". BUT you must define the array beforehand.

Re: Concatenation with array

Reeza — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 15:20:39 GMT

If you need a solution like this, it's clearly homework so review your course notes or the documentation on how to reference "variable lists". The answer is on this page:
http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrcon/69852/HTML/default/viewer.htm#p0wphcpsfgx6o7n1sjtqzizp1n39.htm

BTW the answer on SO is incorrect. It does work, but if that's the homework question it's highly likely that's not the correct answer.