topic Extract string with specific format in SAS Programming

Extract string with specific format

Chrisas — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:33:57 GMT

Hi everyone!

I would like to extract all the strings with a specific format for example "ABCxxx_x".

The 'x' symbol refers to digit numbers (from 0 to 9).

For example, I want to get the string "ABC123_3" or "ABC598_4".

Could anyone help me?

Thank you in advance!

Re: Extract string with specific format

PaigeMiller — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:10:45 GMT

So you want all strings that begin with "ABC"? Or all strings that begin with any three letters followed by numbers and/or symbols? Or can strings that begin with 2 characters or 4 characters also be acceptable?

Don't make us generalize from a single example, that is impossible.

Please explain exactly what you are looking for. Give examples of what you want and what you don't want.

Re: Extract string with specific format

andreas_lds — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:12:46 GMT

We need to know how the strings look it and what you expect as result., so please provide data in usable form and show what you want.

Re: Extract string with specific format

AMSAS — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 14:21:03 GMT

Here's an example using PRXMATCH
I made some assumptions, but the example should help

data have ;
	infile cards ;
	input myText :$12. ;

cards;
ABC123_4
DEF567_8
not_me
or_me
or_123
;

data want ;
	retain patternID;
	if _n_=1 then do ;
      pattern="/[A-Z]{3}[0-9]{3}_[0-9]/";
      patternID=prxparse(pattern);		
	end ;
	set have ;
	position=prxmatch(patternID, myText);
	put mytext= @25 position= ;
run ;

Re: Extract string with specific format

Chrisas — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:06:01 GMT

Thank you for your response. I want the first three letters to begin with "ABC" then the next three characters to be digit number from 0-9, then underscore and then one digit number from 0-9.

For example: I want ABC123_3 or ABC564_9.

Re: Extract string with specific format

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:11:48 GMT

So you only need to adapt the pattern given by @AMSAS :

pattern="/ABC[0-9]{3}_[0-9]/";