topic Re: concatenate strings across columns in SAS Programming

concatenate strings across columns

m_o — Mon, 01 May 2017 21:43:09 GMT

Hi,

I would like to concatenate across columns containing a string of single characters to obtain a new column containing the letters arranged in alphabetic order. This will allow me to identify all the people with the same combination.

I would really appreciate any help! Thank you!

data have:

id d1 d2 d3 d4

1 A B C D

2 B D A C

3 D A B C

4 E B F D

etc

data want:

id concat

1 ABCD

2 ABCD

3 ABCD

4 BDEF

etc

Re: concatenate strings across columns

Reeza — Mon, 01 May 2017 21:46:55 GMT

CALL SORTC along with CATT

Please review the documentation if you need to review usage.

call sortc(of d1-d4);
x = catt(of d1-d4);

In addition, please consider posting data as a data step, you're close but missing the input statement in your sample.

It helps...since that means I might take a few minutes to actually test this rather than just assume it works and leave the testing to you.

So really, it's in your best interest to post data as a data step.

Re: concatenate strings across columns

Shmuel — Mon, 01 May 2017 21:55:23 GMT

Use CALL SORTC to sort the variables then concatename them:

data want;

set have;

array dx d1-d4;

call sortc(of dx(*));

concat=cat(dx(*)); /* OR concat=compres(d1||d2||d3||d4); OR concat=cat(d1,d2,d3,d4) */

drop d1-d4;

run;