topic substring and substracting in SAS Procedures

substring and substracting

sophia_SAS — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:35:14 GMT

Hi SAS community,

I would like to write a substring that uses the variable, "number", starts at position 1 and has a length that stops at 2 places before the last digit. Please advise.

This is what I have tried:

data want;

set have;

new_number=substring(number,1,(-2));

run;

I have also tried this method where I write out a separate substring for each length of the observations for the "number" variable. (This variable contains lengths ranging from 10-20).

data want1;

set have1;

new_number1=substring(number,1,(10-2));

new_number2=substring(number,1,(11-2));

new_number20=substring(number,1,(20-2));

run;

Thanks.

substring and substracting

KarlK — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:42:05 GMT

If I understand you correctly, how about:

new_number = substring(number,1,length(number)-2);

HTH,

Karl

substring and substracting

sophia_SAS — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:07:42 GMT

This code along with codes I previously used did not seem to work as it appears to take anywhere from 2-3 digits off the entire length.

If the code works, shouldn't the output look something like this?

Number New_Number

423902 4239

240986 2409

55093 550

20994 209

8203986 82039

However instead I obtain an output that looks like the last 3 numbers have been removed.

Number New_Number

423092 423

240986 240

55093 55

20994 20

8203986 8203

Thanks.

substring and substracting

KarlK — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:21:43 GMT

It seems to work for me. See code and output below. Are you sure your original text fields don't have any leading blank spaces?

data one;
input MyNumber $ 1-7;
newnumber = substr(MyNumber,1,length(MyNumber)-2);
datalines;
423902
240986
55093
20994
8203986
;;;;
run;

proc print; run;

Obs MyNumber newnumber

1     423902       4239
2     240986       2409
3     55093        550
4     20994        209
5     8203986      82039

substring and substracting

sophia_SAS — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:50:14 GMT

You are correct. I amended the statement by adding the strip function.

nmbstrip=strip(number);

new_number=substring(nmbstrip,1,length(nmbstrip)-2);

run;

Thanks.