Replacing variable values with values with a space

[abak]

I need to merge two data sets, but one of them has one thing labelled two ways: "Place A" and "Place_A". I want to keep it as "Place A" Because I am plotting this data later on and the _ is not a beautiful thing. 

Then, I need to merge the data sets based on place, but that is not the issue here, I am trying to replace "Place_A" with "Place A" in one data set so when I merge, they are recognized as the same variable. Code:

data test2;

   set test;

   if PLACE = Place_A then PLACE = 'Place A'n;

run;

Error: "Place A is not a valid SAS name".

This is in SAS 9.2 Unix.

[novinosrin]

Take a look at

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000279245.htm

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrcon/62955/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000998953.htm#a0009...

[Shmuel · Accepted solution]

I assume you have a variable named PLACE in your input and you want to replace '_' with ' ' then

either do:

place = translate(place,' ','_'); /* arguments: variable name, replacement, to be replaced */

or correct your code using literals to distinguish from variables:

if place = 'Place_A'  then place = 'Place A';

in this case you can use either single quotes or double quotes.

[abak]

Just to clarify, I have a variable named PLACE and it has some of its values named Place_A that I want to change to Place A

[abak]

Thank you, I added VALIDVARNAME = ANY in the data statement and it told me that it created a data set with 0 observations.

data test VALIDVARNAME = ANY;

  set test2;

  if PLACE = Place_A then PLACE = 'Place A'n;

run;

or: 

data test;

  set test2;

  VALIDVARNAME = ANY

  if PLACE = Place_A then PLACE = 'Place A'n;

run;

[Shmuel]

You are mixing variable name with variable value.

Is 'Place_A' a variable name ? If YES maybe you want to  add 

    LABEL Place_A = 'Place A';

then define you prefer use lables in the chart/report instead variable names.

Otherwise - see my previous post.