how to extract part of a string

[HitmonTran]

Hello,

How do i extract the value in the "( )" and convert into numeric? I only want numbers, not "NA".

data:

var1 (character)

3 ( na   )

81 (41.1%)

3 (1.5%)

want:

var2 (numeric)

.

41.1

1.5

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

Untested because example data not provided in form of working data step code.

data want;
   set have;
   var2 = input(scan(var1,2,'()'),?? comma12.);
   format var2 percent8.1;
run;

The '()' in the SCAN function is telling the function to only consider ( and ) when separating out values. So it is easier to tell exactly where/end the desired second value occurs.

If you want to change the actual value from 41.1% then you need to add a multiply by 100. I left the value alone and provided a format that will display the digits in the expected range. The ?? preceding the informat comma12 is to suppress the invalid data messages when attempting to convert "na" into a numeric value.

---

@HitmonTran wrote:

Hello,

How do i extract the value in the "( )" and convert into numeric? I only want numbers, not "NA".

data:

var1 (character)

3 ( na   )

81 (41.1%)

3 (1.5%)

want:

var2 (numeric)

.

41.1

1.5

---