Compbl

[sundeep23]

I am reading a sas program in to a dataset which has multiple blanks when I use compbl it's not compressing the multiple blanks to single blanks any ideas on how to approach?

[PGStats · Accepted solution]

Try replacing tabs with spaces before applying compbl

newStr = compbl(translate(str, ' ', '09'x));

[sundeep23]

Thanks pgstats works like a charm ... why do we need to do that compbl can't find spaces automatically?

[PGStats]

Well, technically, tabs are not spaces; although I can't see a good reason why compbl shouldn't compress tabs too.

[ballardw]

Tab characters are not blank characters. TABS may  appear as spaces depending on software and how it treats tabs but they are not the same as the character blank generated by pressing a space bar.

[sundeep23]

Thanks you all for the info:)