topic Re: Question about prxchange in SAS Programming

Question about prxchange

art297 — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 04:04:17 GMT

How does one identify 0 or more spaces? I thought that the following would work, but it fails for the 2nd record ("Jones, Fred") because the , and F are separated by two spaces. It works for all of the other records.

data ReversedNames;

input name & $32.;

datalines;

Smith,Tom

Jones, Fred

Kavich, Kate

Turley, Ron

Dulix, Yolanda

;

/* Reverse last and first names with a DATA step. */

data names;

set ReversedNames;

name = prxchange('s/(\w+),\s*(\w+)/$2 $1/', -1, name);

run;

Re: Question about prxchange

FriedEgg — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 04:24:14 GMT

Art,

There is no issue with your regular expression. The issue is with your reading of the ReversedNames cards. & will only move past the first space with list input.

filename ft15f001 temp;

data ReversedNames;

length name $ 32;

infile ft15f001 length=len;

input @1 name $varying. len;

list;

parmcards;

Smith,Tom

Jones, Fred

Kavich, Kate

Turley, Ron

Dulix, Yolanda

;

Re: Question about prxchange

art297 — Tue, 14 Apr 2015 12:09:16 GMT

Matt,

Thanks! While I've obviously forgotten things I know, at least I'm FINALLY getting around to learning at least a little about regular expressions!