Data left of a space

[AaroninMN]

How do I get only data left of a space.
Ex. If the field was Jean Pierre and I only wanted Jean to be returned?

Also is there a way to do this when the space is in different positions such as space 6 or 8?

Thanks in advance.

[deleted_user]

SCAN is SAS's tokenizer function.
[pre]
data test_this;
sentence = "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog";
first_word = scan(sentence,1," ");
last_word = scan(sentence, -1, " ");

log_string = "2008-04-29 14:55 | application | method | WARNING -- ... " ;
time_string = scan(log_string, 1, "|" );
run;
quit;

proc print;
run;
quit;
[/pre]

So, read about the SCAN function in the SAS documentation.

[AaroninMN]

Thank You. For some reason I thought I needed to use substring and trim.

[Doc_Duke]

SCAN is a relatively new function. INDEX and SUBSTR are older tools that could be used to the same effect (but with a lot more effort).