sas concatenate strings without duplicate value

[Suzy_Cat]

Hello helpers:)

I am trying to concatenate client's contact into one column and do not want it appears multiple times if the same number registered under home/work/mobile.

Client_Contact=catx(',',Home_Phone,Work_Phone,Mobile_Phone);

I googled and only found below solution. Just wondered if there is any other better way to achieve it?

Thanks in advance 🙂

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42616892/sas-remove-duplicated-words-in-a-string

[Reeza]

Those are the recommended ways and most of the answers from there are users who are on here and would provide very similar answers again anyway.

[ChrisNZ · Accepted solution]

You could reset the values before concatenating?

H=ifc( Home_Phone   = Work_Phone   , ' ', Home_Phone  );

M=ifc( Home_Phone   = Mobile_Phone , ' ', Mobile_Phone);

W=ifc( Work_Phone   = Mobile_Phone , ' ', Work_Phone  );

Client_Contact=catx(',', H, M, W);

Otherwise, if you had many values in the list, using call sortx allows you to only compare to the next value in the list rather than compare to the rest of the whole list.

[Suzy_Cat]

Perfect! This is what I want. 

Thanks a lot 🙂   @ChrisNZ