Remove only the second space from a string

[tropical_surfer]

How can I remove only the 2nd space in a string?

[Astounding]

There may be easier ways.

It may be that this is not what you really want.  Remember, you are only shifting text over since the length of a character variable is fixed.

You may be better served by the COMPBL function.

WIth all that in mind, here is a way to approach what you asked for:

data want;

set have;

blanks=0;

if string > ' ' then do i=1 to length(string) until (blanks=2);

  if substr(string, i, 1)=' ' then blanks + 1;

end;

if blanks=2 then string = substr(string, 1, i-1) || substr(string, i+1);

run;

I also tried looking at CALL SCAN, but didn't find an approach that seemed like it would work.

[PGStats]

Given the string

AsBsCssD

where s is a space, do you want

AsBCssD  (second space of the string removed)

or

AsBsCsD  (double space replaced by single space) ?

[Patrick]

What does "2nd space" mean? The 2nd occurence of a space or just don't have consecutive spaces?

For "not consecutive spaces" I'd use function "compbl()"

[Ksharp · Accepted solution]

data _null_;
x='xxx yyy zzz';
call scan(x,3,p,l,' ');
want=substr(x,1,p-2)||substr(x,p);
put x= want=;
run;