topic Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator in SAS Enterprise Guide

How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Misted5 — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 12:35:09 GMT

Hi,

I'm new to using EG and I'm amending a flow built by someone who has since left. It's EG 4.3 (so a bit elderly) and the input dataset structure has changed since the flow was originally built.. I'm trying to combine address data to fit and it seems simple enough but I'm struggling. Any help that I can try would be gratefully received please!

Data example:

Field 1 Field 2

14 Anywhere Street, Town, County LR12 6HG

I need to add the postcode into the same field as the first part of the address but with a comma after the county and before the postcode. The output should look like:

Field 1

14 Anywhere Street, Town, County, LR12 6HG

The output will be feeding into a subsequent code node so has to have the correct input structure or it fails. I don't know how to SAS code to try and amend the code node so I'm stuck! I've found heaps of guidance for removing commas but not for adding one in.

Many thanks

Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Kurt_Bremser — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 13:39:57 GMT

Just concatenate, but take care of trailing blanks:

field1 = trim(field1) !! ', ' !! field2;

Also note that field1 needs to be defined with a length sufficent to hold the concatenated values, so you might need to create a new variable, as you can't change the length of a variable on-the-fly.

Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Misted5 — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 14:21:03 GMT

Ah thank you very much, I haven't used trim before - I'll try this when I'm back in work tomorrow

Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Tom — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 18:19:34 GMT

SAS now has a lot of interesting CAT....() functions.

CATX() is useful in this case.

field1=catx(',',field1,field2);

Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Astounding — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 04:25:57 GMT

Regardless of the approach you take, one of the issues to consider is the lengths of the variables involved. Make sure FIELD1 is long enough to hold the combined values (otherwise it is possible to lose characters from the end of the combined string). If you need to adjust the length of FIELD1, do it before the SET statement:

data want;

length field1 $ 100;

set have;

*** whatever approach you choose;

run;

Re: How to combine 2 char columns and add a comma separator

Misted5 — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 20:10:58 GMT

Thank you all for your quick help, it was much appreciated. I hadn't thought about the length of the field, and when I checked it was auto-set to 200 characters so plenty of room but by luck rather than judgement.

Thanks again