topic Compress special characters in SAS Procedures

Compress special characters

GreggB — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:34:04 GMT

I'm trying to compress all special characters out of street addresses. It won't allow me to compress #. When I take it out of the statement, it does allow me to compress the periods. I have other characters such as commas and apostrophes I want to get rid of also.

street=upcase(compress(street,'.','#');

Compress special characters

Doc_Duke — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:44:09 GMT

RTFM. You have the syntax wrong.

street=upcase(compress(street,'.#');

Compress special characters

ballardw — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:44:34 GMT

Put all of the characters to compress within one set of quotes. The comma between them as you have is trying to interpret the # as a modifier.

street=upcase(compress(street,'.#');

Compress special characters

GreggB — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:49:58 GMT

Excellent. Thank you.

Compress special characters

art297 — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:50:38 GMT

You might find it even easier if you just KEEP the characters you want. e.g.,

n or N

adds digits, the underscore character, and English letters to the list of characters.

thus street=compress(street,,'kn) might accomplish everything you want

Compress special characters

GreggB — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:55:11 GMT

Cool. That's good to know.