general problem / solution

[Gen-E79]

Hello!

I have a problem that i think has a general solution. It is like this

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Problem basis:

dataset have observations with unknown number of variables
all variables are of type text
some of them are empty and which ones are varies from one observation to another

Task:

for all observations, ignore all empty variables and return only the value of first occurrence of variable with text per observation

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New to SAS, I can figure this out with number variables but ran into a dead-end with text-variables. 

Anyone here that see an obvious solution? 🙂 

Thanks

[Astounding]

It depends what you mean by "first".  If you mean the first variable using the internal order in which SAS is storing the variables, you can use:

data want;

set have;

array charvars {*} _character_;

do firstone=1 to dim(charvars) until (charvars{firstone} > ' ');

end;

if firstone > dim(charvars) then firstone=0;   /* just in case there are no missing values */

else name_of_first = vname(charvars{firstone});

run;

If you have your own "order" in mind for searching, you will need to replace _CHARACTER_ with a list of variable names in the proper order.

Added a statement in case you are looking to get the name of the first variable.

[RW9]

As an alternative to @Astounding's great example:

data want;
  infile datalines dlm="," dsd;
  input var1 $ varb $ xyz $;
  first_result=scan(catx(",",of _character_),1,",");
datalines;
astring,something,yv
,nomiss,
,,abc
;
run;

The catx() creates a string with your character variables where present seprated by , so the first of that string is going to be the first non-missing.

Do note that is is a good idea to post some test data, in the form of a datastep, so we can provide code working for your data.

[data_null__]

@RW9  the coalesceC function seems the obvious choice.

data want;
   infile cards dsd missover;
   input (var1 varb xyz) ($);
   First_not_blank = coalesceC(of var1-character-xyz);
   cards;
astring,something,yv

,nomiss
,,abc
;;;;
   run;
proc print;
   run;

 

[Astounding]

You could easily be right about what's needed.  In that case, you don't really need to know the variable names:

First_not_blank = coalescec(of _character_);

[RW9 · Accepted solution]

Or use the shortened:

First_not_blank=coalescec(of _char_);

Any advances 

[data_null__]

---

@RW9 wrote:

Or use the shortened:

First_not_blank=coalescec(of _char_);

Any advances 

---

Yes, while not an issue for your example, that syntax will included the variable on the left in the list _CHAR_.  I would normally define an ARRAY just after SET statement to have the benifit of using _CHAR_ and not including unwanted variables in the coalesceC list.

set ...;
array _c[*] _character_;
first_no_blank = coalesce(of _c[*]);

[Gen-E79]

Appreciate the help and the quick response time guys, thats just straight up impressive! 🙂

Cheers!