topic Re: Remove numbering from a variable in SAS Programming

Remove numbering from a variable

luvscandy27 — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 16:57:04 GMT

Hello everyone, I have a variable which contains items such as:

1. Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings

2. Injury and poisoning

I only want to keep the character portion:

Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings

Injury and poisoning

Could someone please help me?

Re: Remove numbering from a variable

PaigeMiller — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:01:15 GMT

Use the COMPRESS function.

variable = compress(variable,,'d');

Re: Remove numbering from a variable

luvscandy27 — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:36:53 GMT

This method does not remove the . as well ?

Re: Remove numbering from a variable

Reeza — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:45:18 GMT

I would find the first period and remove from there onwards using substring.

Compress may inadvertenly remove any other numeric/periods.

However, these were likely used to order the data so assuming you don't need that you'll be fine.

x=findc(variable, '.');
want = substr(variable, x);

Re: Remove numbering from a variable

PaigeMiller — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 17:51:13 GMT

@luvscandy27 wrote:

This method does not remove the . as well ?

Please give us a complete description of the problem. Show us representative examples.

Re: Remove numbering from a variable

Tom — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 18:26:52 GMT

If you know that every value has that numeric prefix then just remove the first "word".

want=left(substrn(string,1+length(scan(string,1,' '))));

Otherwise you will have to work harder first to figure out if the string does have the prefix.

data have ;
  input string $CHAR80. ;
cards4;
1.  Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings
2. Injury and poisoning
;;;;

data want ;
  set have;
  new_string = prxchange('s/^ *\d+\. +(.*)$/\1/',1,string);
run;