topic Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order in SAS Programming

Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

skibur — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:06:41 GMT

Hi everyone,

I was given a dataset with first name and last name variables and asked to concatonate these and then order the full name alphabetically. I have managed to concatonate the names but I am struggling to order the full name. Hopefully the example below will clear things up.

Data I had:

fname sname

Jim Smith

Tom Bell

Data currently:

fullname

JimSmith

TomBell

Data I need:

fullname2

hiiJmmSt

BellmoT

Apologies if this has been answered but I have not found anything on my searches!

Thanks in advance

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

HB — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:25:15 GMT

This looks like homework. My guess would be you would set up a loop to break each concatenated name into individual characters, dump them in an array one by one, sort the array, and output the contents.

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

novinosrin — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:27:55 GMT

Data currently;

input fullname $20.;

datalines;

JimSmith

TomBell

;

data want;

set currently;

array t(50) $ _temporary_;

call missing(of t(*));

do _n_=1 to length(strip(fullname));

t(_n_)=lowcase(char(fullname,_n_));

end;call sortc(of t(*));newname=cats(of t(*));run;

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

BrunoMueller — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:28:36 GMT

Have a look at the CALL SORTC routine.
Define an array, put your chars into the array elements and then use the CALL SORTC.

What is the use case for this data manipulation?

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

skibur — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:28:57 GMT

I can see why it looks like homework! But no its for a work project and I am a relative beginner and it was causing me issues. I wouldnt have came to here without having a go myself.

Thanks for the advice, it is much appreciated!

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

skibur — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:31:06 GMT

Thank you so much. I will try to understand this.

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

skibur — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 16:31:50 GMT

Thanks for your advice. I dont want to say too much but its for data matching with another work data set.

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

HB — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 17:06:35 GMT

data matching with another work data set.

Hmm. "Tim Mott" and "Tom Mitt" will not match in name form, but will match in sorted anagram form. That could be interesting.

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

Andygray — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 17:08:53 GMT

@skibur I think your question has been answered. Please close the thread. It's way too simple question

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

HB — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 17:23:02 GMT

Not that simple for me.

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

bodowd — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 15:30:33 GMT

Using compress with the whole alphabet at the first argument, your text as second argument, and 'k' modifier to keep letters for the alphabet as they appear.

data test;
input fname $ sname $ ;
datalines;
John Smith
Tom Bell
;

data test;
	set test;
	fullname = cats(fname, sname);
	fullname2 = compress('AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz', fullname, 'k');
run;

Re: Rearranging a Character Strings Into alphabetical order

mkeintz — Fri, 19 Jul 2024 19:15:28 GMT

@bodowd wrote:

Using compress with the whole alphabet at the first argument, your text as second argument, and 'k' modifier to keep letters for the alphabet as they appear.
data test;
input fname $ sname $ ;
datalines;
John Smith
Tom Bell
;

data test;
	set test;
	fullname = cats(fname, sname);
	fullname2 = compress('AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz', fullname, 'k');
run;

@bodowd : Very nice, because you can trivially change the desired order of characters in the result:

data test;
	set test;
	fullname = cats(fname, sname);
	fullname2 = compress('AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz', fullname, 'k');
	fullname3 = compress('ZzYyXxWwVvUuTtSsRrQqPpOoNnMmLlKkJjIiHhGgFfEeDdCcBbAa', fullname, 'k');
run;

But be careful - In the absence of a LENGTH declaration, the resulting FULLNAME2 and 3 lengths are determined by the first argument of the compress function - i.e. length 52 in this case.

Also, letters that appear more than once in the original, appear only once in the result.