fullname to shortname

[Amy0223]

Hi community,

I don't know how to code this problem below.  Any help is much appreciated!

Variable name fullname (length $30) has a respondent's first, middle, and last name. Create var shortname (length $20), which has only the first and last name, separated by a single blank.

[PaigeMiller]

The SCAN() function ought to work here.

For example

SCAN(fullname,1) extracts the first "word" from fullname

Give it a try, see if you can get it to do what you want.

[Amy0223]

I tried it with sql and prxChange. It seems to work but I don't know how to specify length $20 for shortName.

data a;
input fullname $30.;
cards;
George W. Bush
George W Bush
George Bush
;
run;

proc sql;
select fullname, 
    prxChange("s/(\w+\s)(\s*\w\.?\s+)(\w+)/\1\3/io",1,fullname) as shortName
from a;
quit;

[Tom · Accepted solution]

You can use the LENGTH keyword in SQL to tell SAS how many bytes to use when storing the variable.

.... as shortname length=20

You could also have used the SUBSTR() function and SAS would have figured out that your expression could only return 20 bytes.

substr(....,1,20) as shortname

[Amy0223]

Thank you very much for your kind help! I really appreciate it!

[Astounding]

Tom, does SUBSTR actually use the length of $20?  Admittedly it has been a long time since I tested this, but I recall that SUBSTR used the length of the incoming string to define a newly created variable.  The basic idea was that the third parameter could be an expression instead of a hard-coded value, and so might not be capable of setting a length.

[Tom]

In a data step it will guess the length based on the input to the SUBSTR() function. But in SQL it will guess the length based on the output of the SUBSTR() function.

data x;
  x=substr('1234567890',1,6);
  y=vlength(x);
  put y=;
run;

proc sql;
 create table test1 as select  substr('1234567890',1,6) as x from sashelp.class(obs=1);
quit;
data _null_;
 set test1;
 y=vlength(x);
 put y=;
run;