topic Re: how to remove the first numbers from a character var, including numbers and "." in SAS Programming

how to remove the first numbers from a character var, including numbers and "."

Bal23 — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:38:49 GMT

2.1 Child Conditions
2.2 Teenage Conditions
 2.3 Adult Conditions
2.4 Senior Conditions

I need to modify this variable, by deleting 2.1, 2.2 etc. and keep Child conditions etc. The lengths of the words left are not same.

The desired var2 should be

Child conditions

teenage conditions

adult conditions

senior conditions

Compress can only remove ., any advice how to remove the first numbers?

Thanks.

Re: how to remove the first numbers from a character var, including numbers and "."

ballardw — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:52:20 GMT

Assuming you do not have spaces before the numbers in question

Variable = substr(variable,index(variable,' ')+1);

might work.

Re: how to remove the first numbers from a character var, including numbers and "."

Bal23 — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:58:40 GMT

Thanks

Re: how to remove the first numbers from a character var, including numbers and "."

SASJedi — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 14:43:39 GMT

Actually, COMPRESS with the appropriate modifiers could handle this particular problem very nicely 🙂 The third argument accepts modifiers to change the behavior of COMPRESS. In this case, I'd use 'k' for KEEP (instead of the default REMOVE behavior) and add an 'a' to specify ALPHABETIC characters along with 's' to specify SPACE characters. The STRIP function gets rid of any leading spaces.

The result:

data test;

length Original Fixed $ 30;

infile datalines dsd;

input Original;

Fixed=strip(compress(original,,'kas'));

put original=$quote. Fixed=$quote.;

datalines;

2.1 Child Conditions

2.2 Teenage Conditions

2.3 Adult Conditions

2.4 Senior Conditions

;

Result:

Obs	Original	Fixed
1	2.1 Child Conditions	Child Conditions
2	2.2 Teenage Conditions	Teenage Conditions
3	2.3 Adult Conditions	Adult Conditions
4	2.4 Senior Conditions	Senior Conditions