Getting rid of french accents in a dataset with french town names

[PierreYvesILY]

hello dear SAS experts,

I have a Dataset contacts_3b_ville containing such names as, 

DOLUS D'OLÉRON

OZOIR-LA-FERRIÈRE

and I want to get rid of the accents and get only regular upcase letters.

I wrote the following:

%let accent="ÀÁÂÄÈÉÊËÔÙÛÜàâäçèéêëîïôöùûÿ";
%let noaccent="AAAAEEEEOUUUaaaceeeeiioouuy";
%put &accent.;
%put &noaccent.;

data contacts_3b_ville2;
set contacts_3b_ville;
nom_min=translate(ort,&noaccent, &accent);
nom_maj=upcase(translate(ort,&noaccent, &accent));
*nom_maj=upcase(ort);
selection = 'A';
run;
proc sort data=contacts_3b_ville2; by nom_maj; run;

I got weird results such as :

Dolus d'Oly ron	DOLUS D'OLY RON
Ozoir-la-Ferriy re	OZOIR-LA-FERRIY RE

from the 2 names quoted before, for instance.

Basically, in the whole dataset, ALL éàè are changed into y+blank, which I don't understand.

Has anyone an idea?

[PeterClemmensen]

Try this

data have;
str = "DOLUS D'OLÉRON éàè   "; output;
str = "OZOIR-LA-FERRIÈRE éàè"; output;
run;

data want;
   set have;
   newstr = translate(lowcase(str),"aaceeeeiiouu","àâçéèêëîïôùû");
run;

[PierreYvesILY]

thank you for your answer.

unfortunately, I have got the following when trying the suggested solution:

AZAY-LE-BRÛLÉ

azay-le-bru lui

CHÂTEAU GONTIER BAZOUGES

chueteau gontier bazouges

etc

I don't understand

[Ksharp · Accepted solution]

Try function BASECHAR() .

[Tom]

You can only use TRANSLATE() with single byte character sets.  Check the setting of the ENCODING option of your SAS session.  You might try using the KTRANSLATE() function instead. That will work with multi-byte characters.

data have;
  length string $100;
  string='OZOIR-LA-FERRIÈRE';
run;

%let accent='ÀÁÂÄÈÉÊËÔÙÛÜàâäçèéêëîïôöùûÿ';
%let noaccent='AAAAEEEEOUUUaaaceeeeiioouuy';

data want;
  set have;
  new_string=ktranslate(string,&noaccent,&accent);
  put (_all_) (=/);
run;

 string=OZOIR-LA-FERRIÈRE
 new_string=OZOIR-LA-FERRIERE

[PierreYvesILY]

thank you, I'll try this also