how maintain single space if string skip one line to another line

[thanikondharish]

/**rawdata set looks like below*/

data rawdata ;

text="essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and

formal than a dissertation or thesis

and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view";

run;

i have one rawdata like above one . with in a string we have multiple empty lines,tab spaces, unwanted spaces . How to remove all type of spaces except single embbded space. 

I tried with few programs but I couldn't . coming like few words going to mix for example see bold letters 'and' 'formal' these words coming like "andformal".

My request is 

The record should be like below if export this dataset:
"essay, an analytic, interpretative, or critical literary composition usually much shorter and less systematic and formal than a dissertation or thesis and usually dealing with its subject from a limited and often personal point of view"

[Tom · Accepted solution]

I cannot tell from your share code what your variable actually contains.

If it just has spaces, as your code would generate, then just use COMPBL() to collapse the multiple adjacent spaces into one.

If it actual does have other invisible characters ( such as null, tab, line feed, carriage return, form feed, or non-breaking space) then first convert them into spaces.

data want;
  set rawdata;
  text = compbl(translate(text,' ','00090A0D0CA0'x));
run;

[Ksharp]

data rawdata ;
text='090D0A'x||"essay, an analytic, interpretative, or ";


length want $ 2000;
want=compbl(prxchange('s/[\f\n\r\t\v]//',-1,text));
run;