How to keep only the first "*" sign in a string (drop the others)

[ballakaay]

Hello,

I work for a lab and I have a dataset which contains lab code string with delimiter "*". I have found that only the first "*" is valid (the othres are typo or not useful) and I would like to remove the rest "*" to clean the data. For example,

*code1 code2 *code3

code1**code2 code3

code1 *code2 *code3

I want it to be

*code1 code2 code3

code1*code2 code3

code1 *code2 code3

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance

[Tom]

Removed? Or replaced with a space?

I would say find where the first one is, then change them all to spaces, then put the first one back again.

loc= index(string,'*');
string=translate(string,' ','*');
if loc then substr(string,loc,1)='*';