Get the first two words in a string

[MarcTC]

Suppose this string is:

s ="Amy,Jeff,Paul,Mary"

I can get the first two words using Scan function twice:

w2 = scan(s,1,',')||scan(s,2,',');

Is there any single function call which can accomplish this?

[chang_y_chung_hotmail_com]

Of course. Here is one, assuming a "word" means something delimited by a comma and possibly the beginning and ending boundaries of a character value.

   data _null_;

     s = "Amy,Jeff,Paul,Mary";

     w2 = prxchange("s|^(.+?),(.+?),.*|$1+$2|",1,s);

     put s= w2=;

   run;

   /* on log

   s=Amy,Jeff,Paul,Mary w2=Amy+Jeff

   */

[MarcTC]

Thanks, expert!