topic Re: Help with extracting first few character of a string in SAS Programming

Help with extracting first few character of a string

hhchenfx — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 02:28:23 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I have text variable and I want to create new variable (new_char_var) that only keep the first, say 5, character.

So the new variable will have value:

vari1

abcdv

Can you help me to get it?

I try to do substring but doesnt work.

Thank you so much.

HHC

data have;
input  var1 $;
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;run;

Re: Help with extracting first few character of a string

PGStats — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 02:42:37 GMT

substr() does work...

data have;
input  var1 $;
newValue = substr(var1,1,5);
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;

Re: Help with extracting first few character of a string

Astounding — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 06:50:26 GMT

While SUBSTR does work, it isn't needed when you want only the beginning of a character string:

data want;

set have;

length new_char_var $ 5;

new_char_var = var1;

run;

Re: Help with extracting first few character of a string

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 07:01:27 GMT

Show your code (and log) where substr "didn't work".

@hhchenfx wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I have text variable and I want to create new variable (new_char_var) that only keep the first, say 5, character.

So the new variable will have value:

vari1

abcdv

Can you help me to get it?

I try to do substring but doesnt work.

Thank you so much.

HHC
data have;
input  var1 $;
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;run;

Re: Help with extracting first few character of a string

Ksharp — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:55:50 GMT

If I understood what you mean.

data have;
input  var1 $;
new=scan(var1,1, ,'ka');
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;
run;