Locate a specific word in a data step, and assign a new value

[ChrilleB]

Hi!

We ran into some problem here and I really could use some help 🙂
I am trying to locate a specific word (litium) from a variable which is coded as a string, with several different other values beside from litium. If a cell contains the word "litium", i want to assign the cell a new value such as "1", and if it doesn't contain the word "litium" I want it to be assigned "0".
The "word" litium can be stored randomly in the cell, with other words around it, or after it etc.
If it's possible I would like to do it as beutiful as possible, in a SAS data step 🙂

Thank you!

Regards,
Christian and Maja.

[sbb]

Explore using the TRANWRD function.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

Recommended Google advanced search, this topic/post:

character functions translate tranwrd site:sas.com

[Flip]

I would suggest
newvar = (index( word, 'litium') ne 0);

[ChrilleB]

Thank you very much for your help!
The tip from Flip worked out in a very good and easy way!

Have a nice day 🙂

[MikeZdeb]

hi ... fyi, this might not apply with your current data set but ...

sometimes there's a difference between looking for a WORD and
looking for a STRING of characters

when looking for a word, it's safer to use INDEXW
since the search string might be embedded in the
text of another word

also, case might be an issue, so ...
[pre]
data test;
input text $20.;
datalines;
Mary is from Maryland
Scott is from Maryland
mary is from Maryland
;
run;

data mary;
set test;
mary1 = index (text,'mary') ne 0;
mary2 = indexw(text,'mary') ne 0;
mary3 = index(upcase(text),'MARY') ne 0;
mary4 = indexw(upcase(text),'MARY') ne 0;
run;

Obs text mary1 mary2 mary3 mary4
1 Mary is from Maryland 0 0 1 1
2 Scott is from Maryland 0 0 1 0
3 mary is from Maryland 1 1 1 1
[/pre]
if I'm looking for any observation with the person Mary
(regardless of case), only the variable MARY4 works with
this data set