any function can count blank?

[harrylui]

good day

is there any function can count the blank from name string

FACEBK AABMSW FBMEADS IRL

like there are 3 blanks over the name string

i also do some data cleansing on this record and the result is FACEBKAAB

can i using that cleansing result and  scan/crosscheck the original record and show below result?

because i did the compress on my cleaned record and i wanted to keep that blank in this attempt of crosscheck

FACEBK AAB

so that i can know how well is my cleansing.

thanks in advance

Harry

[novinosrin]

data w;
str='FACEBK AABMSW FBMEADS IRL';
count=countc(str,' ');
run;

/*Or you could use S modifier in the same COUNTC function*/

data w;
str='FACEBK AABMSW FBMEADS IRL kjh';
count=countc(str,,'s');
run;

[Reeza]

Some other functions you may find useful, include COUNTC(), SCAN(), TRANSLATE() and COUNTW() which will count the number of words. You can use COUNTW() to find the number of words, and then loop with SCAN() to isolate each word if you want.

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

Character strings offer huge numbers of variations:  trailing blanks (that should presumably not be counted), multiple blanks between words (that presumably should be counted) to name a few.  I would try it differently:

data want;
   set have;
   n_blanks = lengthn(var) - lengthn(compress(var));
run;

[harrylui]

thank you all for helping