topic Re: Compbl in SAS Programming

Compbl

sundeep23 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 15:31:49 GMT

I am reading a sas program in to a dataset which has multiple blanks when I use compbl it's not compressing the multiple blanks to single blanks any ideas on how to approach?

Re: Compbl

PGStats — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 15:50:01 GMT

Try replacing tabs with spaces before applying compbl

newStr = compbl(translate(str, ' ', '09'x));

Re: Compbl

sundeep23 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 15:59:04 GMT

Thanks pgstats works like a charm ... why do we need to do that compbl can't find spaces automatically?

Re: Compbl

PGStats — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 16:03:59 GMT

Well, technically, tabs are not spaces; although I can't see a good reason why compbl shouldn't compress tabs too.

Re: Compbl

ballardw — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 16:05:23 GMT

Tab characters are not blank characters. TABS may appear as spaces depending on software and how it treats tabs but they are not the same as the character blank generated by pressing a space bar.

Re: Compbl

sundeep23 — Wed, 07 Oct 2015 16:21:35 GMT

Thanks you all for the info:)