topic Help with SAS case when condition in SAS Enterprise Guide

Help with SAS case when condition

eagles_dare13 — Wed, 07 May 2014 19:17:42 GMT

In the below code:

case when strip(col1) then "DIGIT"

when anyalpha( strip(col1)) then "ALPHA"

else "DIGIT"

I am confused about the first statement. Under what condition will it evaluate to 'DIGIT'? When col1 = null? I understand the second case....if col1 has an alphabet, it will evaluate to "ALPHA"

Re: Help with SAS case when condition

jwillis — Wed, 07 May 2014 19:53:32 GMT

Eagles,

The Strip(function) works on character variables. If you were to assume that any value that does not have an alpha, is a numeric, then this code should work for you.

case

when anyalpha( strip(col1)) then "ALPHA"

else "DIGIT" end as variable_type

Re: Help with SAS case when condition

TomKari — Wed, 07 May 2014 21:24:32 GMT

It makes very little sense to me. You don't say whether col1 is character or numeric, but when I try it with a numeric variable it fails with

ERROR: Function STRIP requires a character expression as argument 1.

so we'll assume that col1 is character.

If it's anything other than blank, the first when clause will be satisfied, and the result will be "DIGIT". If it's blank, the second when clause won't be satisfied, and it will fall through to the else clause, and the result will be "DIGIT".

I can't figure out how to get a result of "ALPHA"!

Tom