topic Re: count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string in SAS Enterprise Guide

count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string

ak2 — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:54:13 GMT

Hi! I have a string like this one 'aaccbdaaaccc', and I need to find the character that occurs the most in consecutive order, and how many times it occurs. I thus need two variables as the output. I do not want to consider the caracter 'a'. The answer should be 'c' and '3'. Do anyone have a solution to this? Help is very much appreciated.

Re: count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string

Reeza — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 14:56:22 GMT

You've posted this in Enterprise Guide, are you using the query builder or familiar with SAS data steps?

Re: count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string

Ksharp — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 02:50:09 GMT

data _null_;
x='aaccbdaaaccc';
length str max_str  $ 200;
pid=prxparse('/(\w)\1*/');
start=1;
stop=length(x);
max_len=0;
call prxnext(pid,start,stop,x,p,l);
do while(p>0);
 str=substr(x,p,l);
 len=length(str);
 if str not =: 'a' and len gt max_len then do;
  max_str=str;
  max_len=len;
 end;
 call prxnext(pid,start,stop,x,p,l);
end;
putlog max_str= max_len= ;
run;

Re: count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string

ak2 — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 09:32:42 GMT

I'm writing a data step.

Re: count the number of most occuring consecutive character in string

ak2 — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 09:33:40 GMT

This worked fine! Thank you so much for your help!