topic Re: How to extract numbers from variables' names in SAS Programming

How to extract numbers from variables' names

joseph626 — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 18:59:59 GMT

Hi there,

I have a wide form of longitudinal dataset recording scores of multiple times like this

ID Group Time0 Time1 Time4 Time9 Time15 Time24 Time37 (...)

1 A 10 15 17 9 8 29 9

2 A 21 39 32 . 33 31 23

(...)

and I'm using array to convert this dataset to convert this dataset to the long form, like that

ID Group Time Score

1 A 0 10

1 A 1 15

(...)

Since there are lots of Timepoints in the wide data, and the numbers are irregular, I have to write a ton of "if...else" following the array, just to change values of variable "Time" in the new dataset.

I wonder if Is there any way to just extract the number following the variable Time0 Time4... and put it as the value in the new Time variable?

Thanks so much!

Joe

Re: How to extract numbers from variables' names

Reeza — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:00:09 GMT

Use VNAME to get the variable name in an array.

Use COMPRESS to retain only digits.

Use INPUT to convert to a number.

Re: How to extract numbers from variables' names

joseph626 — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 19:24:01 GMT

Thanks Reeza!

I did the following code and it get the jobs done!

	time = input(compress(vname(array[i]),,'kd'), 6.);