changing letter case

[geneshackman]

I have an old and a new data set that looks like this

old data set

id   group  characteristics

1    age      2 years old

2    age      5 years old

new data set

id   group  characteristics

3    age      3 Years old

4    age      5 Years old

I want to combine these two. However, as you can see, the old data set has "years" and the new data set has "Years"

How can I change the characteristics in my new data set so they are all lower case? Is there a simple way other than writing the same line for every characteristic? e.g., 

if characteristics eq "3 Years old" then characteristics = "3 years old"

if characteristics eq "5 Years old" then characteristics = "5 years old"

Is there a simple way to do this all at once?

Thanks

[maguiremq]

data want;
set have;
new_var = lowcase(original_var);
run;

You can call it on your original variable, but it's probably a good idea to just create a new one.

[geneshackman]

Thanks, this worked!

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

data want;

   set have;

   characteristics = lowcase(characteristics);

run;

There are three basic character case functions in SAS: Lowcase, make all characters lower case, Upcase, make all characters upper case and Propcase, makes first letter of each "word" upper case and others lower case.

There are additional functions KLowcase, Kupcase and Kpropcase that do the same things for double-byte character sets.

[geneshackman]

Hi Ballarddw, this worked!