topic Re: Compress function treats slash as “or”? in SAS Programming

Compress function treats slash as “or”?

Feyng819 — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 19:38:18 GMT

Hi there, I would like to use compress function to take away any substring of “1/2”, but I found that it also removes any “1” or “2” from the string. E.g I have “20 1/2 Apple” and I want it to be “20 Apple”, but when I tried to use the compress function it gives me “0 Apple”.. is there anyway to use compress function to achieve this?

This is my data:
Data have; input var 100$.;
Cards;
20 1/2 Apple
;
Run;

The code I tried is the following
var=compress(var, “1/2”) but it does not work.

This is what I want:
Data want; input var 100$.;
Cards;
20 Apple
;
Run;

Re: Compress function treats slash as “or”?

tarheel13 — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 19:46:47 GMT

you can use prxchange again.

new_string = prxchange('s/1\/2//', -1, text2);

Re: Compress function treats slash as “or”?

ballardw — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 19:59:17 GMT

Read the documentation a bit more carefully:

COMPRESS Function

Returns a character string with specified characters removed from the original string (emphasis added for character not string of characters)

So Compress removes all the characters you provide.

If you want to replace a specific sequence of characters you might try TRANSTR

Data have; 
   infile datalines truncover;
   input var $100.;
   want = transtrn(var,'1/2','');
Cards;
20 1/2 Apple
;
Run;

Note changes to your data step to actually read the value of VAR.

Re: Compress function treats slash as “or”?

Tom — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 20:59:31 GMT

COMPRESS() is NOT what you want. That removes CHARACTERS.

So all of these statements are the same:

var=compress(var, '1/2') ;
var=compress(var, '12/') ;
var=compress(var, '/12') ;
var=compress(var, '21/') ;

You want TRANWRD() or TRANSTRN() instead. You can use COMPBL() collapse multiple adjacent spaces into just one space.

var=compbl(tranwrd(var,'1/2',' '));

Re: Compress function treats slash as “or”?

Feyng819 — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 00:17:26 GMT

Thanks for your help!