Remove numbering from a variable

[luvscandy27]

Hello everyone, I have a variable which contains items such as:

1.  Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings

2. Injury and poisoning

I only want to keep the character portion: 

Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings

Injury and poisoning

Could someone please help me? 

[PaigeMiller]

Use the COMPRESS function.

variable = compress(variable,,'d');

[luvscandy27]

This method does not remove the . as well ?

[PaigeMiller]

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@luvscandy27 wrote:

This method does not remove the . as well ?

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Please give us a complete description of the problem. Show us representative examples.

[Reeza]

I would find the first period and remove from there onwards using substring.

Compress may inadvertenly remove any other numeric/periods.

However, these were likely used to order the data so assuming you don't need that you'll be fine. 

x=findc(variable, '.');
want = substr(variable, x);

[Tom · Accepted solution]

If you know that every value has that numeric prefix then just remove the first "word".

want=left(substrn(string,1+length(scan(string,1,' '))));

Otherwise you will have to work harder first to figure out if the string does have the prefix.

data have ;
  input string $CHAR80. ;
cards4;
1.  Symptoms, signs, and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings
2. Injury and poisoning
;;;;

data want ;
  set have;
  new_string = prxchange('s/^ *\d+\. +(.*)$/\1/',1,string);
run;