substring from the right

[podarum]

Hi,  is there a quick way to substring from the right but skip a few digits.

If I have 2345001  I want to get 2345 .. I want to only remove the last 3 digits...  the length of the field is not uniform, soucl be 8 digits or 10 or 9, etc.  but th eonly thing sore sure is that I want to remove the last 3 digits..  Thanks

[PGStats · Accepted solution]

myStr =  substr(myStr, 1, length(myStr) - 3);

[monei011]

Another approach in these sorts of situations is to use the substring function with the reverse function

mystr =  reverse(substr(strip(reverse(mystr)),4));

[Tom]

Is your variable a number or a character string?

137  data _null_;

138    x=2345001 ;

139    y=int(x/1000);

140    put x= y=;

141  run;

x=2345001 y=2345

[Haikuo]

The more, the merrier:

data _null_;

  mystr="2345001";

  new_str=prxchange('s/(^\w+)(\w{3}$)/$1/',-1,strip(mystr));

  put mystr= new_str=;

run;

Haikuo

[PGStats]

The simpler, the better :smileysilly:

data _null_;

  mystr="  2345001     ";

  new_str = prxchange('s/\d{3}\s*$//', 1, mystr);

  put mystr= new_str=;

run;

PG

[Haikuo]

Better indeed!

Haikuo

[monei011]

Might be better use of prxchange, but not exactly readable nor intuitively obvious what the code is doing.

I'd want a comment explaining what was being done and why so that my BAU support junior could understand what the code was doing.

[PGStats]

It reads: Replace (s) a succession of exactly 3 ({3}) digits (\d) followed by any amount (*) of white space (\s) and occuring at the end of the string ($) with nothing(//). Do this only once.

PG