Adding quotation marks to strings then joining them with comma

[Treeva]

Hi everyone,

I am working on two character variables where I need to do the following with:

First: add double quotation marks to the strings of both of them, for example:

var1 : Q11.0    Q11.1   to become  "Q11.0"    "Q11.1"
var2:   Q110    Q111   to become  "Q110"    "Q111"

Second: Join each line strings from both variables by commas, for example: 

var_all:  "Q11.0", "Q110"

               "Q11.1" , "Q111"   

Is there a one-statement function in SAS that can give me the attempted result?

Thanks so much for your helpful tips in advance!

Treeva

[RW9]

Please post test data in the form of a datastep in future.  As such this is not tested:

data want;
  set have;
  length want $2000;
  want=cat('"',tranwrd(var1," ",'","'),'"'," ",'"',tranwrd(var2," ",'","'),'"'");
run;

So effectively replace the space in each variable with quote comma quote, and then cat this with a quote before and after.

[Treeva]

Thanks RW2 for your prompt response!

I'll make sure in the future to post a test data in the future, so it can be tested.

I followed your instructions regarding doing the replacement according to my own case, but unfortunately it didn't work! probably it was my fault!

Appreciated

[Reeza]

The QUOTE() function will enclose the value in quotes. The CATX() will combine them. It does depend a bit on how your data is structured but something like the following:


Y = catx(', ', quote(var1), quote(var2));

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

---

@Reeza wrote:
The QUOTE() function will enclose the value in quotes. The CATX() will combine them. It does depend a bit on how your data is structured but something like the following:


Y = catx(', ', quote(var1), quote(var2));

---

And depending on the assigned length and actual values of the variables you may need to remove trailing blanks before using the QUOTE function:

Y = catx(', ', quote(strip(var1)), quote(strip(var2)) );

[Treeva]

The code perfectly worked!

Thanks a lot, ballardw.

Appreciated!

[Treeva]

Thanks, Reeza, for your valuable response!

Your suggested code made it easy for me to digest the next suggestions!

Appreciated!

[novinosrin]

The best is to try regular expressions but that syntax hurts my eye. If @Ksharp the genius, has the time and wishes to help

[Treeva]

Thanks, novinosrin, for stopping by & inviting another user to give a hand here!

Appreciated!