Find a substring in a word of document

[WenjieZhou2021]

Hi, 

 I want to find a sales reference in a PDF document. The sales reference is formatted like ACC/19000101/001, etc. In the document, txt_array{i} represents a word. I need to determine if txt_array[i] starts with a prefix such as ACC or DCA, which are stored in a macro variable codes. I encountered an error, screenshots of the error are provided below.

SYMBOLGEN:  Macro variable CODES resolves to 
            'ACC','DCA','DCB','DCC','CNA'
NOTE: Line generated by the invoked macro "PROCESS_SALES".
6752                    if (symget('refcode') = "") and (find(txt_array[i],&codes)>0) then     call
                                                          ____
                                                          72
6752     ! symputx('refcode',txt_array{i});          
ERROR 72-185: The FIND function call has too many arguments.

How can I fix this?

Thanks

[Reeza]

Hard to say exactly without full code, but it looks like you're passing multiple comma delimited quoted words to the find function, eg.

find(txt_array[i],&codes)>0

Becomes the following which is invalid.

find(txt_array[i],'ACC','DCA','DCB','DCC','CNA')>0)

Depending on the rest of your program  and requirements you could add double quotes around the variable or you may need to iterate through the codes. Unsure of requirements here.

find(txt_array[i],"&codes")>0

---

@WenjieZhou2021 wrote:

Hi, 

 I want to find a sales reference in a PDF document. The sales reference is formatted like ACC/19000101/001, etc. In the document, txt_array{i} represents a word. I need to determine if txt_array[i] starts with a prefix such as ACC or DCA, which are stored in a macro variable codes. I encountered an error, screenshots of the error are provided below.

SYMBOLGEN:  Macro variable CODES resolves to 
            'ACC','DCA','DCB','DCC','CNA'
NOTE: Line generated by the invoked macro "PROCESS_SALES".
6752                    if (symget('refcode') = "") and (find(txt_array[i],&codes)>0) then     call
                                                          ____
                                                          72
6752     ! symputx('refcode',txt_array{i});          
ERROR 72-185: The FIND function call has too many arguments.

How can I fix this?

Thanks

---

[Tom · Accepted solution]

I need to determine if txt_array[i] starts with a prefix

So no need to use FIND for that test.  In normal SAS you canuse the colon modifier on the comparison operator to have the comparison truncated to the length of the shorter string. 

So in this case use it on the IN operator.

txt_arrya[i] in: ('ACC','DCA','DCB','DCC','CNA') 

PS SAS does not care if you use spaces or commas between the items in the list of values for the IN operator.  So it will be easier if you set CODES like this :

%let codes='ACC' 'DCA' 'DCB' 'DCC' 'CNA';

since it is much easier to use macro variables with spaces than macro variables with commas.

[WenjieZhou2021]

Thank you, it's working!