topic Re: Separate Apt information from Street information in SAS Programming

Separate Apt information from Street information

fannavivian — Wed, 31 May 2017 16:20:30 GMT

Hi Guys,

Got a question about separating Apt information from address. The data looks like this:

Address

5213 Elmcrofa Blvd Apt 10210

5648 Sunset Blvd Apt 52103

...

I was thinking about using scan function, but not sure if the delimiter can be a character and how. The desired output would be like this:

Address Apt

5213 Elmcrofa Blvd Apt 10210

5648 Sunset Blvd Apt 52103

Thanks,

Fan

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

LinusH — Wed, 31 May 2017 16:24:19 GMT

Street addresses are often more or less free text fields, which make them hard to parse by simple rules.
There have been several discussions on the forum regarding this, feel free to search and explore the hidden treasures of SAS Communities!

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

Astounding — Wed, 31 May 2017 17:15:50 GMT

If you can rely on "Apt" indicating where to separate the text, this would work:

data want;

set have;

start = index(address, 'Apt');

if start = 1 then do;

apartment = address;

address = ' ';

end;

else if start > 1 then do;

apartment = substr(address, start);

address = substr(address, 1, start-1);

end;

run;

If you have to consider other separators, such as 'apt' or 'APT' or 'apmnt', it becomes more detailed but can use pretty much the same tools.

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

fannavivian — Wed, 31 May 2017 19:37:36 GMT

Thank you~~ This is similar to what I thought, but yours is more detailed. Just to share what I figured out a moment ago.

address=substr(ADDRESS1, 1, index(ADDRESS1, 'Apt') - 1);

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

Astounding — Wed, 31 May 2017 19:42:05 GMT

Always good to experiment and learn, but here are some things to be wary of.

Functions take some time to run. It's faster to use INDEX once per DATA step instead of twice.

If "Apt" does not appear, INDEX will return 0. Will the program still work in that case?

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

fannavivian — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:03:31 GMT

Thanks. I'm not worry about the case you just mentioned, because the first left letter of address is always a number in my db. But I do have a question that what if there're other delimitors, such as "suite", "#", "STE", so what's your recommendation?

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

Astounding — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:17:16 GMT

Using the code I posted originally, an easy change would be:

start = max( index(address, 'Apt'), index(address, '#'), index(address, 'STE'), index(address, 'suite') );

If you find other possible separators, it's easy enough to add to the list.

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

fannavivian — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:27:04 GMT

Awesome!!!!

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

ballardw — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:42:18 GMT

Index may not be the function to use. Index may find the Apt in "CAptain Jones St". You may want to look at INDEXW

Re: Separate Apt information from Street information

fannavivian — Wed, 31 May 2017 20:53:36 GMT

Good add up!