multiple delimiter reading scan function??

[buddha_d]

SAS group, 

         could you please help me get this from string name (3 spaces as delimiters, between name and city). I want to extract name. 

Any thoughts please. I have sas eg and it is not taking scan function (quotation marks has 3 spaces in between). It worked in SAS 9.3, but not in sas eg. 

example: name1=scan(name,1,"   ");

 have file 

name   city   state  zipcode

wal mart   siouxcity   ia  14525

arthur chiropracter nd   richmond   ca  25684

want file

wal mart

arthur chiropracter nd

Thanks in advance.

[ballardw]

Are you reading an external file? If you actually have 3 characters between each field you could use the dlmstr='   ' option instead of dlm

However the data you show has only two spaces between the state and the zipcode so perhaps dlmstr='  ' (two spaces) will actually work to read the file.

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

This is mildly clumsy, but it should work when you are searching for the beginning of the incoming string:

name1 = substr(name, 1, index(name, '   ') ) ;

[buddha_d]

This works thanks Astounding