Including character inputs in a variable.

[cool1993]

Hello,

I want to determine whether CHAR2 variable is included in CHAR1 variable.

The data and the desired results are as follows:

Data:

NAME	YEAR	CHAR1	CHAR2
JOY	2009	A, B, C, D	A, B, D
JOY	2009	A, B, D	A, B, D
JOY	2010	A, D	A, B, D
JOY	2011	A, B, C, D	B

Desired result:

NAME	YEAR	INCLUDE
JOY	2009	1
JOY	2009	1
JOY	2009	0
JOY	2009	1

I tried the following solution, but it doesn't apply because the order of input is different.

INCLUDE = (indexw(CHAR1,CHAR2,', ')>0);

If you know the solution, please help me.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

So it looks like you don't want to test if the value of CHAR2 is in CHAR1 (which is sort of what that function did).

Instead it looks like you want to test if every item listed in in CHAR2 is also listed in CHAR1.  

To do that you will need a loop.

data want ;
  set have ;
  not_found=0;
  do i=1 to countw(char2,', ') until (not_found);
    not_found=not indexw(scan(char2,i,', '),char1);
  end;
run;

So for each record NOT_FOUND will be TRUE (have a value of 1) if there exists a word in CHAR2 that is NOT in CHAR1.  If ALL of words in CHAR2 are also in CHAR1 (or CHAR2 is empty) then NOT_FOUND will be FALSE (have a value of 0).

[novinosrin]

Hi @cool1993  Will this work?

data have;
infile cards expandtabs truncover;
input NAME $	YEAR	CHAR1 & $10.	CHAR2  & $10.;
cards;
JOY	2009	A, B, C, D	  A, B, D
JOY	2009	A, B, D	A, B,  D
JOY	2010	A, D	A, B, D
JOY	2011	A, B, C, D	  B
;


data want;
set have;
include=countw(char2,', ')=countc(compress(char1,', '),compress(char2,','));
run;

[Shmuel]

Both CHAR1 and CHAR2 variables are strings that include lists.

Are the lists of characters (1 byte each) or list of strings ?

You can use function COUNTW to check how many members are in each of those variables,

select a member of the list to check using SCAN function,

Use DO loops to check each member of CHAR2, does it exist in CHAR1.

You can check existence using either FINDW function or INDEX function or compare two members selected by SCAN.