Extract all characters from a variable

[sfmeier]

Hello!

I have a (macro) variable with a value in the form

"AB";"AG";"FZ","IE"

of variable length.

I would like to create a new variable with all the characters from my (macro) variable and blanks in between, i.e.

AB AG FZ IE

I tried the SCAN function in a do loop in the DATA step but I got an error because of the ;s in the value of the (macro) variable.

How can I get it done?

Thx,

Stefan

[shivas · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

Try this..Hope it helps...

%let x=%str("AB";"AG";"FZ","IE");

%let xx1 =%sysfunc(compbl(%sysfunc(translate(&x,' ','" ; ,'))));

Thanks,

Shiva

[sfmeier]

Thx, Shiva! What works! What does it do?

Cheers, Stefan

[ArtC]

In this solution the TRANSLATE function is changing the special characters to blanks, and then the COMPBL function converts multiple blanks to a single blank.  There are other functions that could have also been used COMPRESS and DEQUOTE among them.

Also this soution uses single quotes to delineate the text strings in the TRANSLATE function.  When using macro language elements this technique can have unintended consequences.  Macro language quoting functions such as %STR and %BQUOTE, shown below, do not have these issues.

     %let xx2 =%sysfunc(compbl(%sysfunc(translate(&x,%str( ),%bquote(" ; ,)))));

I once had got a number of consulting hours to debug a program, ultimately the problem was found in the following code fragment

     %scan(&name, &i, ' ')

which works fine unless the &name contains an apostrophe such as O'Conner

[sfmeier]

Thx!