save only letters before coma

[Smitha9]

HI,

I have a dataset:

Byran,Maer

yasmen kiy

Ali, dert

Mi, Yehchg

I want to have the name before the coma(,)

wanted dataset;

Byran

Yasmen

Ali

Mi

Can I do this in SAS?

thank you in advance.

[ballardw]

Something like

data want;
   set have;
   length first $ 15;
   first = scan(name,1);
run;

It really helps to provide example data with the names of your variables and characteristics.

Above I am guessing that the longest of the first word will be 15 characters long.

[lsandell]

The SCAN function would be the easiest way to achieve this.

NewVarName = SCAN(oldvarname, count, ',') ;

Count - is the word number (the position of where it is in the text string); yours should be 1.

Your DLM is a comma

Here is helpful documentation for the future SCAN function.