topic Re: Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words in SAS Programming

Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words

vegan_renegade — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:20:35 GMT

Hi, I would like to use PRXmatch to exclude the words in the argument rather than the usual include. Is there an option or modifier to do this?

Re: Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words

maguiremq — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:23:41 GMT

https://support.sas.com/rnd/base/datastep/perl_regexp/regexp-tip-sheet.pdf

I think this is what you want. Without example data, we can't know what you need.

Re: Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words

vegan_renegade — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:45:42 GMT

I don't have data immediately available but here's my data step as an example:

data test1;
set test;
if prxmatch("m/word1|word2|word3/io", variable) > 0;
run;

Instead including word1, word2, and word3 in output, I want to exclude those.

Just now, I thought that if I include "then delete" after the if statement, it might do what I want.

Re: Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words

maguiremq — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:53:02 GMT

data have;
input variable :$25.;
datalines;
word1
word2
word99
whatisaword
wordle
what
;
run;

data want;
	set have;
		if prxmatch("/[^(word1|word2|word3)]/", trim(variable)) > 0;
run;

But even then, I'm wondering if you have extra whitespace or you could literally just switch the condition (>0). I can't tell without example data.

Re: Using prxmatch to EXCLUDE words

vegan_renegade — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 20:33:44 GMT

Thanks, just figured it out. It's as simple as including not in front of prxmatch:

if not prxmatch(arguments)