Numbers and Alphas in Character Field

[SannaSanna]

Hello -

I am looking for some assistance.   I have a character field variable that contains data with both text and numbers.  I am looking to change the data that is text into number zero and keep the text that looks like numbers and convert to number for further calculation/analysis.  Is there a way to do this?  Any help would be greatly appreciated.   

[Tom]

Why zero?

Create a new variable from the old variable.

Example: Create NUMBER from ALPHA.

data want ;

  set have ;

  number = input(alpha,??20.);

  if number = . then number = 0;

run;