topic Concatenate - Operand in SAS Enterprise Guide

Concatenate - Operand

jen123 — Sat, 14 May 2011 00:45:54 GMT

Hi,

I have 3 columns in a dataset I would like to combine into one column. I used the CONCATENATE function, but kept getting an error that "CONCATENATE REQUIRES CHARACTER OPERANDS". Below is part of the error log. Any advice regarding line 15?
Thanks!

***********************

/* Concatenate */
15 (Name=Event_Month || Operators || Queue_Name) AS Concatenate
16 FROM WORK._2011_05_11_COMBINED_NCL_BY_QUEU AS t1
17 GROUP BY t1.Site, t1.Event_Month, t1.OPERATORS, t1.QUEUE_NAME, (CALCULATED Concatenate);
ERROR: Concatenation (||) requires character operands.
ERROR: The following columns were not found in the contributing tables: Name.

Re: Concatenate - Operand

DBailey — Sat, 14 May 2011 13:36:49 GMT

I'm presuming event_month is a numeric variable. You'll need to use the put command to convert it to character as in
put(event_month,z2.0)||operators||queue_name

Re: Concatenate - Operand

jen123 — Sat, 14 May 2011 18:26:51 GMT

THanks for the help! I am a brand new user...with very little programming background.

Event_month is Date9.

I used your code below and the results are the name of the operators and queue name....no event month.

Thanks again!

Re: Concatenate - Operand

DBailey — Sat, 14 May 2011 20:55:19 GMT

What format do you want the event_month to be in your concatenated string? Just put that in the put command.

put(event_month,yymmdd8.)||operators||queue_name

Re: Concatenate - Operand

jen123 — Sun, 15 May 2011 14:24:09 GMT

That worked! Thanks very much.

Re: Concatenate - Operand

sbb — Sat, 21 May 2011 14:16:45 GMT

Also, you may want to consider the CAT functions (there are several) depending on the desired result (SAS behavior, such as automatic trim) - CATT, CATS, CATX.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.