topic Re: Pull date from long character field in Statistical Procedures

Pull date from long character field

Ja5ya — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 00:55:50 GMT

I'd like to pull date from a long character field.

For instance:

Out of another, I get a lovely view of the bay on 8/23/20 and a little private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking on 5/5/20.

From this I'd like my output to be:
date=08/23/2020

date=05/05/2020

Please help. Thanks!

Re: Pull date from long character field

PGStats — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 01:23:39 GMT

Can a sentence be "I'll see you on the first day of November 2020" ?

Re: Pull date from long character field

Ja5ya — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 02:12:22 GMT

No, this is the data we receive so we can't change the date format.

Re: Pull date from long character field

PGStats — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 02:40:31 GMT

Use regular expressions matching. You can iterate the matches with prxNext:

data want;
if not prxId then prxId + prxParse("@\d\d?/\d\d?/\d\d(\d\d)?@");
set have;
start = 1;
stop = length(text);
call prxnext(prxID, start, stop, text, position, length);
do while (position > 0);
    date = input(substr(text, position, length), ?? mmddyy10.);
    if not missing(date) then output;
    call prxnext(prxID, start, stop, text, position, length);
    end;
keep date;
format date yymmdd10.;
run;

Re: Pull date from long character field

Ja5ya — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 03:31:48 GMT

Thanks for the regular expression! This worked out quite well.