topic Merge multiple lines into one record in SAS Programming

Merge multiple lines into one record

A1ex777 — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 19:43:59 GMT

Hello.

I have dataset with one column that contains a lot of records.

For example the first 3:

abc

def

ghi

How can i merge it into 1 record? -

abc def ghi

The important thing also is that all blanks must be saved.

Re: Merge multiple lines into one record

Tom — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 19:57:02 GMT

Which spaces need to be preserved? Just the leading spaces?

data want;
  set have end=eof;
  length new_var $300 ;
  new_var = trimn(new_var) || var;
  if eof;
run;

Or the trailing spaces that are added to pad the string value to the full length of the variable?

data want;
  set have end=eof;
   length new_var $300 ;
   substr(new_var,(_n_-1)*vlength(var)+1,vlength(var))=var;
  if eof;
run;

Do you really only want one observation? Why ? Or is there some grouping variable?

data want;
  set have end=eof;
  by id;
  length new_var $300 ;
  if first.id then new_var=' ';
  new_var = trimn(new_var) || var;
  if last.id;
run;

Re: Merge multiple lines into one record

A1ex777 — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:09:32 GMT

@Tom Tom thanks a lot for quick answer.
Yes i need both type of spaces.

There's no grouping variable. I just have dataset with column that contains separate records with html text. So i need to store it in one record.

Re: Merge multiple lines into one record

Tom — Mon, 11 Apr 2022 20:18:26 GMT

That seems silly. Just leave the HTML text as is and then when writing it to an actual HTML file just don't instead any line breaks.

So if you have a dataset named HAVE with a variable named TEXT that is defined to hold 100 bytes and you want to use it to create a one line HTML file named myfile.html use something like:

data _null_;
  file 'myfile.html' recfm=n ;
  set have;
  put text $char100.;
run;