topic Re: Pulling Specific Character Variables in SAS Procedures

Pulling Specific Character Variables

pbravo — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:21:04 GMT

Good Morning,

So I would like to pull variables that contain a specific character string in the beginning, followed by any combination afterword.

For examples, I want to pull zip codes (character) but only want the specific zip codes "97252" and anything else that comes after those 5 specific characters like the dash and state code.

Please help.

Thank you.

Re: Pulling Specific Character Variables

statistician13 — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:23:39 GMT

There are several ways to do this, but how about a sql statement with the like function?:

proc sql;
create table work.output as
select * from
work.input a
where
a.zipcode like '97252%';
quit;

You could also do this in a data step with =: operator:

data work.output;
set work.input;
if zipcode=:'97272' then output;
run;

Re: Pulling Specific Character Variables

pbravo — Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:58:13 GMT

Thank you. Works like it should