topic Re: compress single and double quote in SAS Procedures

compress single and double quote

milts — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 02:36:33 GMT

hi all,

let's say i have a value '00012345

how can i remove the single quote or double quote?

if i use compress i'll get a compilation error since syntax for compress is
compress(var,"");

it is enclosed in double quotes so when you put a single quote and a double quote as your arguements, you wont be able to run the code. hope i was able to explain it correctly

are there any ways to remove quotes?

thanks in advance!

Re: compress single and double quote

KevinQin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:44:56 GMT

The function COMPRESS should be OK.

Please try the code below:
data _null_;
a = "'00012345"""; *string with single quote and double quote;
put a=;
b = compress(a, "'""");
put b=;
run;

Re: compress single and double quote

milts — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 00:13:45 GMT

thanks a lot kevin! got it now

Re: compress single and double quote

sfleming — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:21:55 GMT

There is also a third parameter to the compress function that can remove all characters of a certain type. For example, 'p' removes all punctuation characters.

data test;
x = "''x''";
y = '""y""';
z = cats(x, y);
w = compress(z,,'p');
run;
proc print data=test;
run;