topic Blanks in SAS Programming

Blanks

robertrao — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 14:14:11 GMT

Hello ,

Is there any preference for using "" versus " " to identify blank charecter fields?

Example:

I am trying to assign a value of 'OP' to all the ID's which are blank

so the IF statement can be either of the 2 below?

if INP_OP=" " then INP_OP='OP'; ---1 space

if INP_OP="" then INP_OP='OP'; ----no space between quotes

INP_OP ID

101

INP 102

INP 103

104

INP 105

INP 106

107

108
INP 109

Re: Blanks

Astounding — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 14:28:24 GMT

For the examples you listed, pick whichever you like. I find it easier to read the code when the blank appears.

Technically, there are other cases where it might make a difference. Within PROC SQL, these produce different results:

separated by ' '

separated by ''

I haven't tested it, but I imagine these could produce different results as well:

if in_op =: ' ' then do;

if in_op =: '' then do;

Re: Blanks

thomp7050 — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 14:28:32 GMT

Out of curiosity, which one is more accurate? I assume that the second option would be more accurate, but what are you finding in your data?

Re: Blanks

RW9 — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 14:30:23 GMT

Tricky one. Yes, most of the time that would be fine having "" or " ", my preference would be for the "" as that shows a null string, whereas the other looks almost like your expecting to be one space. There are times where spaces are important, strip() versus trim() is one that pops to mind, and asis=on in proc report.

If you want to be fool proof then the simplest method is to use the missing() function rather than the logic, so rather than:

if variable=" " then flag="Y";

Do:

if missing(variable) then flag="Y";

Of course this is easier if you use numeric flags:

flag=missing(variable);

Its a bit of two of one and half a dozen of the other though much like the do you use || or the cat functions, in most scenarios cat functions are more readable, is cat(a,b) better then a||b?

Re: Blanks

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 27 Apr 2017 14:35:48 GMT

When comparing a string literal to a character variable, "" is equivalent to " ", because a missing character variable is always filled with blanks, and the minimum length for a character variable is 1.