find variable names that contains special symbols

[laiguanyu001]

Hi,

I want to check if all my variable names in my data set contains nothing other than alphabetic letters, numbers, or underscore. I've tried 

select * from dictionary.columns where libname = mylib

and memname  = mydata and name not like "%[0-9][A-Z][_]%";

So ideally if there exists a variable name that has a special letter, proc sql step will return that variable name. But I don't think I'm using the wildcard operation correctly.

Please help!!

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

Example using the FINDC function

data want;
       input word $16.;
       invalid_char_position=findc(trim(word),'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz_','idk');
cards;
abc_def
abC_Def7_e
7eiw
_6^78
;

 Or, slightly less typing

    invalid_char_position=findc(trim(word),'','nk');