topic Re: SAS new line symbol character code? in SAS Procedures

SAS new line symbol character code?

Yura2301 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:57:26 GMT

Hello,

I have simple task - replace new line symbol to simple space character.

So some sas table has character cell and this cell has long string with new line characters inside, and I need just replace all these symbols to space symbols.

Looks like this task can be simple resolved by simple sas perl function:

...

prxchange("s/X/ /",-1,ColName);

...

Where X- new line character(or appropriate code) that I actually can't find , and ColName is the name of character column that has this new lines symbols.

Will be grateful for any help!

SAS new line symbol character code?

Ksharp — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:39:26 GMT

new line character is \n in Perl Regular Expression.

prxchange("s/\n/ /",-1,ColName);

Ksharp

SAS new line symbol character code?

Yura2301 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:48:09 GMT

Hi Ksharp,

Thanks, it helped.Before I tried same /n character but inside of quote('/n' istead of simple /n) that's why it didn't helped.

Thanks once more!

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

Tom — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:43:29 GMT

Regular expression is overkill for such a simple task.

You can use translate to replace single characters with other characters. Note that the order of the arguments to translate seems backwards, which I assume you can blame on the IBM mainframe command that SAS used in the old days.

translate(ColName,' ','0A'x)

Also you can use TRANWRD to replace substrings with replacement text.

tranwrd(ColName,'0A'x,' ')

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

Yura2301 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:10:31 GMT

Hi Tom,

Thanks, I supposed that perl fucntion will perfom this operation fuster, but may be really simple tranwrd function will work quicker, I'll look into it.

Thanks!

SAS new line symbol character code?

Doc_Duke — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:25:14 GMT

Yura,

One other comment. The newline "character" means different things on different operating systems. So Tom's '0A'x would work for Unix (which just uses the linefeed as a newline marker). Windows uses the two character combination of <CR><LF> to mark the end of a line ('0D'x).

The perl function knows which OS you are on and adjusts accordingly.

Doc Muhlbaier

Duke

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

Yura2301 — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:18:19 GMT

Thanks Doc!

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

FriedEgg — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:20:47 GMT

using the regular expression prxchange('s/\r?\n/ /o',-1,foo) will take care of cases for newlines with or without carriage returns.

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

Yura2301 — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:31:17 GMT

Thanks!

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

maheshtalla — Mon, 06 Oct 2014 12:06:00 GMT

Hi Ksharp,

I was also facing the same issue. After searching a lot, i found this and it was very helpful.

Thanks a lot.

Re: SAS new line symbol character code?

gee — Wed, 08 Oct 2014 01:19:08 GMT

Thanks this expression helping out me a lot.