Juletip #5 How to add 0’s before a character variable

[PiaRønnevik]

The REPEAT function can be really helpful, especially when you want to add 0’s before a character variable. The REPEAT function, REPEAT(argument, n), returns a character value consisting of the first argument REPEATed n times.

So first, a simple example on how to use the REPEAT function:

data temp;
	x=REPEAT('Merry Christmas ', 1);
	put x=;
run;

The REPEAT function returns a character value that consist of the first argument repeated n+1 time, hence this output:

The second demonstration show an example on how to add 0’s before a numeric variable ‘y’:

data numeric;
	input x y;
	cards;
7896 44
5431 243
8934 1
6541 675
;
run;

data temp;
	set numeric;
	yy = put(y, z5.);
run; 

The z5. is adding ‘k’ zeros before the variable y, so the total length of the new variable ‘yy’ is 5. The ‘k’ is calculated as 5 - number of values in the variable ‘y’, and gives us the following results:

The Zw.d format doesn’t work on a character variable, so the last example show how to add 0’s before a character variable ‘y’:

data character;
	input x y$;
	cards;
7896 A44
5431 A243
8934 A1
6541 A675
;
run;

data temp;
	set character;
	yy = cats(REPEAT('0',5-length(y)-1), y);
run;

The CATS function concatenates 0’s with the variable 'y', while the REPEAT function calculates the repeat of 0’s. The repeat of 0’s is calculated as: 5 - number of letters and values in the variable y - 1. This SAS code gives the following output: