Extracting part of a string

[ammarhm]

Hi everyone

I need help with 2 issues

1. I have a file containing thousands of enteries that look like this:

PatientFirstName;PatientLastName;PatientDateOfBirth;PatientID;HomeDoctorSalutation;HomeDoctorFirstName;HomeDoctorLastName;ExamType;ExamDate;ExaminerSalutation;ExaminerFirstName;ExaminerLastName; Comment 3;Image Comment 4;_x000D_

"John";"Doe";"01/01/99";"9999999";"MS";"Alex";"Josef";"surgery";"01/01/17";"MR";"John";"Watson";"Mr";"Sherlock";"Holmes";"GX";"11111";"";"";"";"";"";"";

I need to extract the parts I marked in red, basically, the first 4 entries between citation marks, and the 9th one. They are always in that order and always between citations

Then Another file with entries as follows:

X:\1111111_5748392_222222222_DDDDD.PDF

I also need the entry I marked in red, basically the one between "\" and "_"

I know this is doable with regular expression, but it would probably take me a couples of days to figure out a solution, so reaching out to the community for some help please... 

Kind regards

AM

[Oligolas]

Hi,

you can achieve what you want with this piece of code:

/*
I need to extract the parts I marked in red, basically, the first 4 entries between citation marks
and the 9th one. They are always in that order and always between citations
*/
proc import datafile="X:\YourFile.txt"
     out=test1
     dbms=csv
     replace;
     getnames=yes;
     delimiter=';';
;
run;

data test2;
   set test1;
   keep PatientFirstName PatientLastName PatientDateOfBirth PatientID ExamDate;
run;

/*
I also need the entry I marked in red, basically the one between "\" and "_"
*/
filename files pipe 'dir  "X:\*.pdf" /b/a-d ' lrecl=5000;
data a;
infile files truncover;
input files $char1000.;
files=scan(files,1,'_');
run;