Help with extracting first few character of a string

[hhchenfx]

Hello Everyone,

I have text variable and I want to create new variable (new_char_var) that only keep the first, say 5, character.

So the new variable will have value: 

vari1

abcdv

Can you help me to get it?

I try to do substring but doesnt work.

Thank you so much.

HHC

data have;
input  var1 $;
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;run;

[PGStats · Accepted solution]

substr() does work...

data have;
input  var1 $;
newValue = substr(var1,1,5);
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;

[Astounding]

While SUBSTR does work, it isn't needed when you want only the beginning of a character string:

data want;

set have;

length new_char_var $ 5;

new_char_var = var1;

run;

[Kurt_Bremser]

Show your code (and log) where substr "didn't work".

---

@hhchenfx wrote:

Hello Everyone,

I have text variable and I want to create new variable (new_char_var) that only keep the first, say 5, character.

So the new variable will have value: 

vari1

abcdv

Can you help me to get it?

I try to do substring but doesnt work.

Thank you so much.

HHC

data have;
input  var1 $;
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;run;

---

[Ksharp]

If I understood what you mean.

data have;
input  var1 $;
new=scan(var1,1, ,'ka');
datalines;
vari1234
abcdv123
;
run;