topic Re: proc sql and trim in SAS Programming

proc sql and trim

FP12 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:22:34 GMT

Hi all,

I dcan't manage to use trim function in a proc sql, don't understand why.

I have a table A with a variable B which format is character(6):

I do this:

%global b;

PROC SQL NOPRINT;
	SELECT TRIM(B) INTO :b
	FROM A
	WHERE ROW_NUMBER = 1;
QUIT;
%put ___&b.___;

The result in the log is:

___A1    ___

I surely miss something, can you help me finding it?

Thanks

Re: proc sql and trim

Reeza — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:30:12 GMT

When creating macro variables you need the TRIMMED option.

%global b;

PROC SQL NOPRINT;
	SELECT B INTO :b TRIMMED
	FROM A
	WHERE ROW_NUMBER = 1;
QUIT;
%put ___&b.___;

Re: proc sql and trim

RW9 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:32:44 GMT

Really, as:

proc sql noprint;  
  select trim(" abc    ") into :r from sashelp.class where name="Alfred";
quit;
%put ___&r.___;

Works fine. You may also be better off using strip() function rather than trim()

Re: proc sql and trim

FP12 — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:33:39 GMT

Many thanks for this.

Is it only because I declared the macrovariable before entering the PROC SQL?

It is strange this two ways of writing...

Re: proc sql and trim

Tom — Mon, 24 Jul 2017 15:34:39 GMT

SAS stores character variables as fixed length variables. Since you didn't tell SQL what length to make the new variable you created with the TRIM() function call its best guess was to make it the same length as the variable going into the TRIM() function. So then when you pushed the value into a macro variable it included the spaces needed to pad the trimmed value back out to the full length of the variable.

You can use the TRIMMED keyword as part of the INTO clause to remove the trailing spaces.

proc sql noprint;
select b 
  into :b trimmed
  from a
  where row_number = 1
;
quit;