Removing control words from RTF compare macro using Regular expressions

[smackerz1988]

Hello,

I am using a macro to compare two versions of an rtf output for differences. My question is there a way to compress/remove control words such as /trowd or /setd using regular expressions so that when using proc compare to detect differences they will match up better. For example.

\trowd\trkeep\...etc..\cf1{Alfreq\cell}\pard\...cf1{1.6\cell}\pard…..\cf1{60\cell}{\row}
\trowd\trkeep\...etc..\cf1{Alice\cell}\pard\...cf1{1.5\cell}\pard…..\cf1{50\cell}{\row}

being turned into this

Alfreq ^^^ 1.6 ^^^ 60 ^^^
Alice ^^^ 1.5 ^^^ 50 ^^^

[Quentin · Accepted solution]

If you search lexjansen.com you'll find papers on this, e.g. 

https://www.lexjansen.com/pharmasug-cn/2017/CC/PharmaSUG-China-2017-CC07.pdf

https://www.pharmasug.org/cd/papers/TT/TT13.pdf

But after skimming, I don't think I would do this in SAS.  I'd be more likely to read the RTF's into MS Word, and use Word's compare feature.  Which could probably be automated with VBA or whatever if needed.