topic Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma in SAS Procedures

Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Treeva — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:25:11 GMT

Hi everyone,

I am working on two character variables where I need to do the following with:

First: add double quotation marks to the strings of both of them, for example:

var1 : Q11.0 Q11.1 to become "Q11.0" "Q11.1"
var2: Q110 Q111 to become "Q110" "Q111"

Second: Join each line strings from both variables by commas, for example:

var_all: "Q11.0", "Q110"

"Q11.1" , "Q111"

Is there a one-statement function in SAS that can give me the attempted result?

Thanks so much for your helpful tips in advance!

Treeva

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

RW9 — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:33:57 GMT

Please post test data in the form of a datastep in future. As such this is not tested:

data want;
  set have;
  length want $2000;
  want=cat('"',tranwrd(var1," ",'","'),'"'," ",'"',tranwrd(var2," ",'","'),'"'");
run;

So effectively replace the space in each variable with quote comma quote, and then cat this with a quote before and after.

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Reeza — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:38:08 GMT

The QUOTE() function will enclose the value in quotes. The CATX() will combine them. It does depend a bit on how your data is structured but something like the following:

Y = catx(', ', quote(var1), quote(var2));

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

novinosrin — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:44:55 GMT

The best is to try regular expressions but that syntax hurts my eye. If @Ksharp the genius, has the time and wishes to help

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

ballardw — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 14:53:06 GMT

@Reeza wrote:
The QUOTE() function will enclose the value in quotes. The CATX() will combine them. It does depend a bit on how your data is structured but something like the following:

Y = catx(', ', quote(var1), quote(var2));

And depending on the assigned length and actual values of the variables you may need to remove trailing blanks before using the QUOTE function:

Y = catx(', ', quote(strip(var1)), quote(strip(var2)) );

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Treeva — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:00:39 GMT

Thanks RW2 for your prompt response!

I'll make sure in the future to post a test data in the future, so it can be tested.

I followed your instructions regarding doing the replacement according to my own case, but unfortunately it didn't work! probably it was my fault!

Appreciated

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Treeva — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:02:33 GMT

Thanks, Reeza, for your valuable response!

Your suggested code made it easy for me to digest the next suggestions!

Appreciated!

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Treeva — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:05:00 GMT

Thanks, novinosrin, for stopping by & inviting another user to give a hand here!

Appreciated!

Re: Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

Treeva — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 15:28:25 GMT

The code perfectly worked!

Thanks a lot, ballardw.

Appreciated!