Concatenation removing duplicates

[Dinkepile]

Good day

Please assist I am trying to concatenate 4 variables but if the values are duplicates I will like to output just a single value.

I have given an example below:


Var1 Var2 Var3 Var4
IN4 IN4 IN4 IN4


Concatenate:
New_Var = var1||"/"||var2||"/"||var3||"/"||var4

The expected value of variable New_Var should be IN4 not IN4/IN4/IN4/IN4

Thank you
Kind Regards
Dinkepile

[ballardw]

No data so untested;

Data want;
   set have;
   array values (*) var1-var4;
   length new_var $ 16 ; /* this needs to large enough to accept the longest possible value*/
   do i=1 to dim(values);
      if indexw(new_var,values[i],'/')= 0 then new_var= catx('/',new_var,values[i]);
   end;
   drop i;
run;

This searches the value of the new_var for each of the variables and if it is not currently present then concatenates.

If your variables actually have different names then the order they appear on the Array statement is the order they are processed.

If the values vary by case "In4" "in4" "iN4" all of these would appear. So you may need to clean data first if spelling or case differences may occur.