how to use scan function to remove '('

[HitmonTran]

Hello, can you help me get the following output? Basically I want to remove any values in "()" without using substr function.

current data:

Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid

Influenza Invalid(20),FLU-22 Invalid(2999)

Influenza Canceled(77),FLU-22 Canceled(77)

Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive

want data:

Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid

Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid

Influenza Canceled,FLU-22 Canceled

Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive

[Quentin]

Can you show the code you have tried?  Seems like maybe this would be a good a better task for regular expressions (PRXCHANGE).  To use SCAN(), I think you'd have to use a DO-loop, assuming you don't know how many sets of parentheses you might have in a value.

[average_joe]

As Quentin suggested, regex replace will do it easily.

data have;
infile cards;
input text &:$50.;
cards;
Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid
Influenza Invalid(20),FLU-22 Invalid(2999)
Influenza Canceled(77),FLU-22 Canceled(77)
Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive
;
run;

data want;
set have;
* lazily search for matching pair of parentheses and replace with empty string;
text_clean = prxchange('s/\(.*?\)//', -1, text);
run;

[Tom]

I suspect that it will be better to use regular expressions instead, but you asked for SCAN() function so here you go.

data want;
 set have;
 length string2 $80.;
 do i=1 by 2 to countw(string,'()');
   string2=cats(string2,scan(string,i,'()'));
 end;
 drop i;
run;

Results

Obs                      string                                   string2

 1     Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid              Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid
 2     Influenza Invalid(20),FLU-22 Invalid(2999)    Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid
 3     Influenza Canceled(77),FLU-22 Canceled(77)    Influenza Canceled,FLU-22 Canceled
 4     Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive            Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive

[Ksharp]

Tom,

I think PRX is the best choice.

If data like the following,your code does not work !

data have;
infile cards;
input string &:$50.;
cards;
Influenza Invalid,FLU-22 Invalid
Influenza Invalid(20),FLU-22 Invalid(2999)
Influenza Canceled(77),FLU-22 Canceled(77)
Influenza Negative,FLU-22 Positive
(Influenza)
;
run;

data want;
 set have;
 length string2 string3 $80.;
 do i=1 by 2 to countw(string,'()');
   string2=cats(string2,scan(string,i,'()'));
 end;

 string3 = prxchange('s/\(.*?\)//', -1, string);
 drop i;
run;