how to leftpad zeroes in SAS

[Jyuen204]

I have an update statement for a table. Since LPAD does not work in SAS. is there a way to easily pad the zeros?

proc sql;
update <TABLE>
set UNIQUE_KEY = Compress('BI'||lpad('9161',7,'0')||'MTSMBE'||(put(CREATION_DATE_TIME,10.)));
quit;

[PaigeMiller]

If the table you are working with is not a "passthru" to an external database (such as Oracle or similar), then use format z10.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Are you trying to generate a digit string from a number?  If so just use PUT() function and Z format.

put(9161,Z7.)

will generate the string '0009161'.

If your source is already a string (and cannot be converted to an integer using INPUT()) then you will need to work harder.

There are many answers to that question on this forum, although I suspect none of them are using the terminology of "LPAD()" whatever language you got that from.