topic Re: Remove leading zeros in SAS Programming

Remove leading zeros

bhca60 — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 20:18:29 GMT

How do i remove leading zeros for a variable with values that look like this:

00099V67
000123

Some have two zeros in front some have three.

Re: Remove leading zeros

mkeintz — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 22:51:16 GMT

You apparently have a character variable, since one of your sample values has the letter "V" in it.

First, and definitely foremost: why do you want to remove leading zeroes from a non-numeric variable?

Let's say you did so. Then, since your sort order is lexicographic, instead of sort order of

000999
002231
011577

with leading zeroes removed (and the remaining characters left-justified) you would have this order:

11577
2231
999

Do you really want that

Re: Remove leading zeros

Tom — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 21:22:39 GMT

This has been asked before, you could search and see if you can find the older discussions.

This is what the VERIFY function is good at.

data have;
  input str $12.;
cards;
00099V67
000123
12345
;

data want;
  set have;
  if verify(trim(str),'0') then str=substr(str,verify(str,'0'));
run;

Re: Remove leading zeros

SASKiwi — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 22:45:43 GMT

What does your variable represent? Leading zeroes can have meaning in character variables and could be dangerous to remove.

Re: Remove leading zeros

Ksharp — Sat, 10 Jun 2023 09:10:00 GMT

data have;
  input str $12.;
cards;
00099V67
000123
12345
;

data want;
  set have;
  want=prxchange('s/^0+//',1,strip(str));
run;