I need to get rid of the alpha characters of a string that are alpha-numeric in nature.

[savyj88]

Hi SAS community, 

I have a variable in a dataset called "id" (short for identification). 

Observations under this variable are recorded as such: 001AB, 002DK, 003LB, 004KC, etc.  

For clarification, the numeric digits refer to the participant number, while the letters refer to the initials of the individual participant in question. 

I would simply like to "get rid" of the letters within these id's. 

Therefore, 001AB would become simply 001, 002DK would simply become 002, and so forth. 

Could anyone point me in the right direction for a solution to this problem?

Many thanks!

[Tom]

Look at the modifiers on the COMPRESS() function.

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/vdmmlcdc/1.0/lefunctionsref/n0fcshr0ir3h73n1b845c4aq58hz.htm

data want;
  set have;
  id = compress(id,,'kd');
run;

284   data want;
285     set have;
286     put id= @;
287     id = compress(id,,'kd');
288     put '-> ' id ;
289   run;

id=001AB -> 001
id=002DK -> 002
id=003LB -> 003
id=004KC -> 004
NOTE: There were 4 observations read from the data set WORK.HAVE.
NOTE: The data set WORK.WANT has 4 observations and 1 variables.

[GraphGuy]

Here's one way to do it ...

data foo;
id='001RA';
run;

data foo; set foo;
id=substr(id,1,length(id)-2);
run;

proc print data=foo; 
run;