topic Re: Joining string's of different length in SAS Programming

Joining string's of different length

pandhandj — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 09:46:25 GMT

Hi Guys,

I find that I am in need of some advice again…

I have to join two tables, t1 has an 11 digit number, t2 is a matching number, but the string is only between 6 and 11 digits. If starting from the last number in the string (the furthest right number) the numbers will match. i.e. Both number are formatted as a character ($12.)

T1	T2
00000456789	456789
00003456789	3456789
00023456789	23456789

How do I add 0’s to the string in T2 to make it an 11 digit number? Or is there a better way to join them?

I’m very new to all of this, so if you could explain it as if speaking to a child, that would be great.

Thanks in advance for your time,

paul

Re: Joining string's of different length

Reeza — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 09:53:44 GMT

Make them the same, either strip leading 0 or add leading zero.

Add leading 0

put( var, z11.)

Remove leading 0

input(var, best12.)

You can either create a new variable and merge using the new variable or do conversion on join condition if using SQL.

Eg:

T1= put(...)

Re: Joining string's of different length

Reeza — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 09:56:47 GMT

Sorry, missed portion about T2 already being character.

You can convert to numeric to implement solution or use repeat to generate number of 0 based on length and concatenate VM,yes.

Untested

Repeat(0, 11-length(t2)) || t2

Re: Joining string's of different length

pandhandj — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 14:54:20 GMT

Hi Reeza, thanks for your input. I worked it out from what you said above. Initially the shorter number was Numeric, I had changed it in a previous step. So I went pack there and padded the 0's to the front and it worked great. thanks for your time, paul