topic Select Variables based on character length in SAS Enterprise Guide

Select Variables based on character length

fgillen1 — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 10:59:06 GMT

Hi all,

I am looking to add a leading '0' to variables within a field that are less that 5 characters in length. Does anyone know of a bit of code that can achieve this? Below is my attempt. I know everything after 'THEN' works fine, its the selecting variables with less than 5 characters that is hindering me.

CASE
WHEN substr(t1.ded_code,max(1,length(t1.ded_code)-3)) THEN PUT(INPUT(t1.ded_code, best.), z2.)
ELSE t1.ded_code
END
AS ded_code_v2

Regards

Finbar

Re: Select Variables based on character length

RW9 — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 11:05:53 GMT

You can simplify it by using SAS functions:

case when lengthn(T1.DED_CODE) < 5 then cats(repeat("0",5-lengthn(T1.DED_CODE)),T1.DED_CODE)
     else T1.DED_CODE end as DED_CODE_V2

So if the trimmed lenght is less than five concatenate 0 for each space less than five. Note, if DED_CODE is numeric, you could simplify this further by:

put(input(T1.DED_CODE,best.),z5.) as DED_CODE_V2

The Z format padds out numbers with preceeding zeroes.

Re: Select Variables based on character length

fgillen1 — Wed, 03 Jan 2018 11:14:06 GMT

Hi,

Thanks! That works fine, I just changed

cats(repeat("0",5-lengthn(T1.DED_CODE))

cats(repeat("0",4-lengthn(T1.DED_CODE))

the first one was throwing in two leading '0's

Regards

Finbar