topic Re: Cutting a String in SAS Procedures

Cutting a String

Benn — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:06:02 GMT

Hi Guys,

I have been trying to cut out a portion of the observations, but unsuccessful.

Basically, I have 2 digits, eg. 11, 12, 22, 31,... ....

I want to cut and isolate the first digit under a new variable named "Header"

So header will have 1, 1, 2, 3,

This is the code I used:

DATA CRSP;

SET CRSP;

Length HEADER $1.;

HEADER=SUBSTR(SHRCD,1);

RUN;

However, Header will have no observations.

Please Heap!

Thanks!

Re: Cutting a String

Robert_Bardos — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 11:59:57 GMT

Try

HEADER = put(SHRCD,best.-l) ;

If that works then a bunch of the assumptions that we had to make (since you provided no log) could be true.

Assumptions such as

SHRCD is numeric and not character
So the log would have told us by mentioning 'Numeric values have been converted to character ...'
"Header will have no observations" should be "Header will be blank"
Happens when SHRCD is numeric and the value is per default right justified in an eight byte field
of which you extract (by means of SUBSTR) position one i.e. a blank

Now why would the above work without invoking function SUBSTR?

That's because the length of HEADER has already been declared as one byte. (Note BTW the statement has to be "length header $1", i.e. no dot after $1 . We are declaring the length here and not assigning a format.)

Transferring a longer character variable's value to a shorter variable results in the value being truncated at the shorter variable's length.

Oh, and "best.-L" means: "write out the numeric value justified left in a format optimal for the field length".

Hope this heaps

Robert

Re: Cutting a String

Astounding — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 14:15:38 GMT

One more obscure possibility: perhaps SHRCD is character, but contains leading blanks. After the LENGTH statement, simply add:

HEADER = left(SHRCD);

Re: Cutting a String

Reeza — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:56:09 GMT

If shrcd is numeric and not character

header=floor(shrcd/10);