topic Re: Prxmatch function for percent in SAS Programming

Prxmatch function for percent

SASdevAnneMarie — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 08:33:36 GMT

Hello Experts,

I have a data like X="BAB 1,50%", I apply the prxmatch function

if prxmatch("/\b1(\.50\%|\%|\s)/",X)>0

but I don't have the right result because I have in the output also the data with X="BAB 1". How to improve the code to get the values with "%" ?

Thank you !

Re: Prxmatch function for percent

FreelanceReinh — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 10:08:37 GMT

Hello @SASdevAnneMarie,

@SASdevAnneMarie wrote:
if prxmatch("/\b1(\.50\%|\%|\s)/",X)>0
... I have in the output also the data with X="BAB 1".

This is because you didn't require a percent sign, but allowed a space character (\s) instead. You may want to allow one or more space characters between the number and the percent sign:

/\b1(\.50)?\s*%/

This matches a word boundary (\b) followed by the number "1" or "1.50", followed by a percent sign either directly or after one or more space characters (e.g. "1 %").

Note that the percent sign does not need to be escaped with a backslash ("\%") and that the expression would not match a number using a comma instead of the decimal point ("1,50%").

Re: Prxmatch function for percent

SASdevAnneMarie — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 10:28:36 GMT

Thank you, FreelanceReinh, the right function is "/\b1(\.50)?\s*%/" ?

Re: Prxmatch function for percent

FreelanceReinh — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 10:41:10 GMT

Whether my suggested regular expression is "right" depends on your requirements, which are not exhaustively defined by the two example strings "BAB 1,50%" (to be matched; or rather with a decimal point?) and "BAB 1" (not to be matched). If my description

This matches a word boundary (\b) followed by the number "1" or "1.50", followed by a percent sign either directly or after one or more space characters (e.g. "1 %").

is what you want, then, yes, the regex is right.

Re: Prxmatch function for percent

Patrick — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 10:54:23 GMT

@SASdevAnneMarie wrote:
Thank you, FreelanceReinh, the right function is "/\b1(\.50)?\s*%/" ?

I would be using single quotes for SAS to not interpret the percent sign as macro token.

In case you also want to cover values like 1.40, 1.3, 1.233333 etc. you could change the RegEx to

'/\b1(\.\d+)? *%/'

or even a bit broader to cover any percent values like 2 %, 12.5 $, 3.765333 %

'/\b\d+(\.\d+)? *%/'

I've replaced \s with a blank. \s stands for any whitespace character like tab etc. which I felt should not be included.

And of course if the string must start with BAB then the RegEx needs to include it.

'/^BAB +\d+(\.\d+)? *%/'