topic Re: replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol in SAS Programming

replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol

Jagadishkatam — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 17:27:40 GMT

Dear Expert,

Could you please help me concatenate every nth word with a symbol.

Consider that i have a string data like below

"having a common variable to merge by ensures that the"

the expected output should be

"having a common * variable to merge * by ensures that * the"

So after every 3rd word i have to place the symbol(*). like above.

Could you please suggest a solution.

Thanks,

Jag

Re: replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol

PGStats — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 18:00:00 GMT

Put the CATx functions to good use:

data test;
length subStr outStr $200;
inStr = "having a common variable to merge by ensures that the";
do i = 1 by 3 until(Missing(subStr));
    subStr = catx(" ", scan(inStr,i), scan(inStr,i+1), scan(inStr,i+2));
    outStr = catx(" * ", outStr, subStr);
    end;
drop subStr i;
run;

proc print data=test noobs; run;

Re: replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol

Jagadishkatam — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 18:28:44 GMT

Thank you so much PG , it worked

Re: replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol

Haikuo — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 18:44:48 GMT

Here is another way:

data test;
length outStr $200;
inStr = "having a common variable to merge by ensures that the";
outstr=prxchange('s/((\w+ ){3})/$1* /', -1, instr);
run;

This is to tell SAS adding * right after the 3rd word, in a literal sense.

Re: replace every nth word with a nth word concatenated with a symbol

Jagadishkatam — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 00:56:33 GMT

Thank you Haikuo it was wonderful.