topic Re: special characters in SAS Programming

special characters

Anuz — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 12:33:57 GMT

Hi All,

I have a situation where in strings can have special characters i.e. names with Umlaut's.

For example :

Is there a way for example :CREACIONES PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L replaced with CREACIONES PAZ RODRAGUEZ S L ?

But it can any character with umlaut's.

data aaa;
ORGNAME='PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L';
Run;

Re: special characters

s_lassen — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 13:05:40 GMT

It may depend on your character set settings, but I had some problems with your example The obvious solution seems to be the good old TRANSLATE function, but that does not work, as 'Ã' seems to register as more than one character in my current SAS session:

 70         data _null_;
 71           set aaa;
 72           newname=translate(orgname,'A','Ã');
 73           put _all_;
 74         run;
 
 ORGNAME=PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L newname=PAZ RODRA GUEZ S L _ERROR_=0 _N_=1

The TRANWRD function works, on the other hand:

 70         data _null_;
 71           set aaa;
 72           newname=tranwrd(orgname,'Ã','A');
 73           put _all_;
 74         run;
 
 ORGNAME=PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L newname=PAZ RODRAGUEZ S L _ERROR_=0 _N_=1

- only problem with that is that you may have to use several calls to get rid of different "strange" characters.

KTRANSLATE works better, as it can translate double-byte to single-byte characters (or the other way round):

 70         data _null_;
 71           ORGNAME='PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S Lã';
 72           newname=ktranslate(orgname,'Aa','Ãã');
 73           put _all_;
 74         run;
 
 ORGNAME=PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S Lã newname=PAZ RODRAGUEZ S La _ERROR_=0 _N_=1

Re: special characters

ErikLund_Jensen — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 13:05:42 GMT

Hi @Anuz

No, I don't think SAS is able to recognise the "basic" character, but you can build your own translation table, like this:

108
109  data aaa;
110    ORGNAME='PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L';
111    NEWNAME = translate(ORGNAME,'A','Ã');
112    put ORGNAME=;
113    put NEWNAME=;
114  Run;

ORGNAME=PAZ RODRÃGUEZ S L
NEWNAME=PAZ RODRAGUEZ S L

You can supply a whole list of to-characters and from-characters in the same translate, see the. manual.

Re: special characters

PaigeMiller — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 13:07:15 GMT

You can use the BASECHAR function.

Re: special characters

Anuz — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 15:07:29 GMT

@PaigeMiller That resolved the issue. that is exactly what i was after. Thank you