How do I remove some part of observation and keep the rest?

[Sapkota]

I have a dataset that has character part and the numeric part. I do not need the character part of the variable in the final analysis. How do I remove some part of the observation (i.e. the character part) and keep the rest (i.e. the numeric part).

For example in the dataset below, how do I program SAS so that 'cm' are removed from the 'Height' variable and only the numeric value is remaining. Same thing for Weight.

ID            Age          Height           Weight

1001       15             163cm          140Lb

1002       21             180               145lb

1003      23              154cm           165

1004      19              132                134lb

1008      21              129cm           134lb

1009      14              113cm           123

1010       9                100               100

Any help in this matter will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

Sapkota

[Reeza]

Look at the compress function. You can't change a character variable to numeric so you'll need to create a new variable.  If you really need it to be the same variable name, rename the height variable before the conversion in the set statement.

height_num=compress(height, 'kd');

[slchen]

height=compress(height,,'kd');

[stat_sas · Accepted solution]

To get height and weight as numeric variables, you need to use input function in addition to compress

data want;

set have;

height_num=input(compress(height,,'kd'),best.);

weight_num=input(compress(weight,,'kd'),best.);

run;

[venkatnaveen]

Why 'kd' used?

I am not getting..

[marty_ca]

It means keep digit and seems to be a SAS option for the compress function.  That is quite handy instead having to specify the actual characters.

[stat_sas]

k and d are two modifiers in compress function that will keep digits in a string and throw away all the rest.

[Sapkota]

Thank you for the helpful responses.

I have one related question. How do I delete the part of the numeric value from one observation which is entirely numeric. For instant in the following example, in the 'Height' variable, if I would like to delete the last two digits of all the observation (so that Height of ID 1001 would be12 instead of 1230 and Height of  ID 1002 would be 14 instead of 1435), how do I do it?

ID              Age      Height

1001         10           1230

1002          12           1435

1003          13            1453

1004          15            1432

1005           11           1786

1006           12            1234

Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks

Sapkota

[stat_sas]

Try this for the desired output.

data want;

set have;

new_height=int(divide(height,100));

run;