Removing quoted text from value

[kalbo]

Hi all

I have some values containing text which can be in single or double quote marks. I would like to remove the quote marks plus the text inside

e.g.

have:

VAR1

hello "dog" is my pet

just text

hi 'people' how are you

want:

VAR1

hello is my pet

just text

hi how are you

thanks for your help

[PeterClemmensen · Accepted solution]

One way

data have;
input var1 $ 1 - 25;
datalines;
hello "dog" is my pet   
just text               
hi 'people' how are you 
;

data want;
   set have;
   var1 = compbl(prxchange('s/".*"//', -1, prxchange("s/'.*'//", -1, var1)));
run;

[kalbo]

Thanks for helping..it works perfectly

[PeterClemmensen]

Anytime 🙂

[Ksharp]

Peter.C

If there were multiple quote characters, your code would get wrong result.

Like this sort of data.

data have;
input var1 $ 1 - 40;
datalines;
hello "dog" is my pet "dog" xxx 
just text 
hi 'people' how are you 'people' 
;

data want;
   set have;
   var1 =prxchange("s/'.*?'|"".*?""//", -1, var1);
run;

[Ksharp]

data have;
input var1 $ 1 - 40;
datalines;
hello "dog" is my pet "dog" xxx 
just text               
hi 'people' how are you 'people'  
;