Leading blank in strings

[Cruise]

Hi Folks:

I'm trying to remove the leading indent from a variable. None of trim, trimn, strip and compbl functions work.

What is not working here? I appreciate your suggestions. 

data test_urb1; set test_urb;
ID_strip=strip(Municipality);
ID_trim=trim(left(Municipality));
ID_trimn=trimn(left(Municipality));
ID_compbl=compbl(Municipality);
run; 

[novinosrin]

Please check the length's of each value of the Municipality variable in test_urb1 vs Id_strip

using length function.

 len=lengthn(id_strip) and notice the difference in the lengths. This should give you some idea than deceiving visuals

[Cruise]

@novinosrin 

Interesting. What shall I do? Take it as a success in using strip function? 

[novinosrin]

Nope all values being 12 bytes of length concerns me. 

You may try to remove hexadecimal characters and control chars if any using:

X is hexadecimal characters

C is control chars

' ' is blank

id_strip=strip(compress(Municipality,' ','xc'));

[Reeza]

Try displaying the variable with a hex format to see what character are there. 

[Shmuel]

Maybe the indent is not a result of blanks.

check the left most character by:

indent = substr(municipality,1,1);
put indent $hex2.;

[Cruise]

Thanks Shmuel. It returned E3. What would E3 indicate? I have no idea.

[Cruise]

Variable indent is black. Took no values. I'm confused.

[ballardw]

Use the data step generator to show what values you actually have:
Instructions here: https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/How-to-create-a-data-step-version-of-your-dat... will show how to turn an existing SAS data set into data step code that can be pasted into a forum code box using the <> icon or attached as text to show exactly what you have and that we can test code against.

Warning: if you are using some double-byte character set this may not help.

Or use the RANK function to see what the first character may be:

data want;

   set have;

   x = rank(first(municipality));

run;

X would be the order in the ASCII (or EBCDIC) character set. If the value is not 32 you do not have a blank. Note that Rank will return the Hex number.

I'm not sure if this will work but the second string below starts with a null character that can be entered on some systems using Alt plus the digits 255 and if the box works correctly the second X= should show 160 (the hex equiv of 255).

data example;
   string = ' abcdef';
   x = rank(first(string));
   put x=;
   string = ' abcdef';
   x = rank(first(string));
   put x=;
run;

The functions you tried would not remove the null as they are not blanks, i.e. ASCII 32.

[Cruise]

@ballardw 

thank you, pls see rank results below. testing your code on my data now. 

[Cruise]

Thanks Ballardw, what would 227 indicate?

[ballardw]

---

@Cruise wrote:
Thanks Ballardw, what would 227 indicate?

---

Anything above 127 is font dependent. Typically used for "foreign language" characters from an American English speakers point of view (Hint: what does the A in ASCII stand for?). Or graphic characters.

For kicks you could run this code:

data _null_;
   file print;
   do x= 32 to 255;
      z= byte(x);
      put x= z=;
   end;
run;

save the result to a text file. Open the file and change the display font to see things change.

[ballardw]

You should be able to use Byte(227) as a character to remove with COMPRESS.

  compress(municipality,byte(227))

May still need to use COMPBL to remove blanks depending on result.

[Cruise]

@ballardw I got leading blank replaced by weird symbols as shown below. 

[novinosrin]

@Cruise  Just extract the need if thats ok?

data want;
set have;
length 	id_strip $15;
id_strip=substr(municipality,anyalpha(municipality));
check_length=lengthn(id_strip);
run;