topic Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field in SAS Programming

Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

Lost_Gary — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:27:44 GMT

I need to covert data to remove the leading zeros from a text field that has decimals. Here is what I have:

data Have;

infile datalines;
format textfield $8000.;
input textfield
;
datalines;
-3.51400
-0.00001
3.05000
0.09000
NA
-3.33100
-0.02900
-0.29000

;run;

data notwhatiwant;
set have;
get = put(input(textfield,8.5),7.5);
run;

textfield	get	need
-3.51400	-3.5140	-3.51400
-0.00001	-.00001	-.00001
3.05000	3.05000	3.05000
0.09000	0.09000	.09000
NA	.	NA
-3.33100	-3.3310	-3.33100
-0.02900	-.02900	-.029000
-0.29000	-.29000	-.29000

I seem to be struggling with that 5th decimal place that I need when there is the negative and non-zero before the decimal. And those that are positive with a leading zero. Seems like this should be easy, but boy am i struggling. Any assistance is appreciated.

Thanks.

Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

Lost_Gary — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:34:37 GMT

Sorry - just 5 decimal places - one of my examples had too many.

textfield	get	need
-3.51400	-3.5140	-3.51400
-0.00001	-.00001	-.00001
3.05000	3.05000	3.05000
0.09000	0.09000	.09000
NA	.	NA
-3.33100	-3.3310	-3.33100
-0.02900	-.02900	-.02900
-0.29000	-.29000	-.29000

Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

Tom — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 19:52:30 GMT

If you want to convert text to text why not use text functions? Such as PRXCHANGE().

data have;
  input textfield $char40.;
datalines;
-3.51400
-0.00001
3.05000
0.09000
NA
-3.33100
-0.02900
-0.29000

;

data want;
  set have;
* Force NEWTEXT to have same length as TEXTFIELD ;
  newtext = textfield;
* Remove any zeros between optional - and . ;
  newtext = prxchange('s/(-{0,1})0*([\d\.]*)/$1$2/',-1,newtext);
run;

Results

Obs    textfield    newtext

 1     -3.51400     -3.51400
 2     -0.00001     -.00001
 3     3.05000      3.05000
 4     0.09000      .09000
 5     NA           NA
 6     -3.33100     -3.33100
 7     -0.02900     -.02900
 8     -0.29000     -.29000
 9

Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

Lost_Gary — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 20:19:02 GMT

Brilliantly Simple - Thank you.

Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

Ksharp — Sat, 26 Jul 2025 05:30:53 GMT

data have;
  input textfield $char40.;
datalines;
-3.51400
-0.00001
3.05000
0.09000
NA
-3.33100
-0.02900
-0.29000
;

data want;
  set have;
  newtext = prxchange('s/^[\-0]+//',1,textfield);
  if first(textfield)='-' then newtext=cats('-',newtext);
run;

Re: Removing leading zeros from a decimal that is a text field

whymath — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 05:23:41 GMT

Very impressive trick from @Tom to keep the same length from raw variable.

As the question itself, in your specific example, replace "0." with "." will be OK, so you can use a tranwrd() function to solve this.

* Force NEWTEXT to have same length as TEXTFIELD ;
  newtext = textfield;
* Repalce "0." with ".";
  newtext = tranwrd(newtext,"0.",".");