topic deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases in SAS Procedures

deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

podarum — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 19:53:39 GMT

Hi, I have a field with accounts that most (80%) have a 0 on the left side.. eg. 081513105 .. I would like to get rid of this leading 0, but only for the accounts that are 9 digits in length and only if the leading is a 0.. if not 0 or less/more than 9 digits in length to leave as is... Any easy way to do this ? Thank you.

Re: deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

ballardw — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:20:06 GMT

Assuming this is actually a character value...

in a datastep something like this with your variable should work

if length (variable)=9 and substr(variable,1,1)='0' then variable = substr(variable,2);

Re: deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

DBailey — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:22:38 GMT

or you could convert it to numeric and back

Re: deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

Astounding — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 20:33:27 GMT

What if it is 9 digits long and starrts with 2 zeros? What if it is 10 digits long and starts with 2 zeros?

Re: deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

podarum — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:21:48 GMT

Thanks all, all valid questions and points. But for my "small" enough data, ballardw's solution works well.. But totally agree if the data was larger and a whoel mix of scenarios.