deleting the first leading digit but in certain cases

[podarum]

Hi, I have a field with accounts that most (80%) have a 0 on the left side.. eg. 081513105 .. I would like to get rid of this leading 0, but only for the accounts that are 9 digits in length and only if the leading is a 0.. if not 0 or less/more than 9 digits in length to leave as is... Any easy way to do this ?  Thank you.

[ballardw]

Assuming this is actually a character value...

in a datastep something like this with your variable should work

if length (variable)=9 and substr(variable,1,1)='0' then variable = substr(variable,2);

[DBailey]

or you could convert it to numeric and back

[Astounding]

What if it is 9 digits long and starrts with 2 zeros?  What if it is 10 digits long and starts with 2 zeros?

[podarum]

Thanks all, all valid questions and points.  But for my "small" enough data, ballardw's solution works well..  But totally agree if the data was larger and a whoel mix of scenarios.