Splitting a column

[Franknferter]

I am new to SAS and have only been using it for 3 months. I am using Enterprise Guide 7.1. 

I am trying to split a column that contains character data displayed as SP0000001 to SP1234567. I would like to eliminate the SP at the beginning leaving just the numbers without the zeros in the front.

[PaigeMiller]

newvar = input(substr(varname,3),8.);

[PeterClemmensen · Accepted solution]

Welcome to the SAS Community 🙂

Provided that you want the result to be a numeric variable you can do like this

data have;
input string :$9.;
datalines;
SP0000001
SP1234567
;

data want;
	set have;
	num=input(compress(string, '', 'kd'), best.);
run;