take the character variable length without chopping a word

[chinna0369]

Hi,

I have a variable which has values more than 200 in its length. So I am trying to take that variable until length 200 without chopping a word. Can you please help me?

Thanks,

Adithya

[Astounding]

How do you know that the variable has more than 200 characters?

Are you able to define a variable that is 201 characters long, so you can inspect the 201st character?

[Tom]

You could just rebuild the string word by word and stop when it gets too long.

data want;
  set have;
  length short $200 ;
  short = scan(long,1,' ');
  do index=2 to 100 while (min(length(long),200)>=length(catx(' ',short,scan(long,index,' '))));
    short = catx(' ',short,scan(long,index,' '));
  end;
run;

 Or ask FINDC() to find the place to break.  Remember it is ok if the space is at position 201.

Example:

data test ;
  input long $char40.;
  length short $20 ;
  short=long;
  location=findc(long,' ',-21);
  if location then short=substr(short,1,location);
cards;
----+---10----+---20----5---30----5---40
This is longer than 20 characters. 
This one, is exactly 20 characters.
But this short.
;

Result

Obs    long                                               short            location

 1     ----+---10----+---20----5---30----5---40    ----+---10----+---20        0
 2     This is longer than 20 characters.          This is longer than        20
 3     This one, is exactly 20 characters.         This one, is exactly       21
 4     But this short.                             But this short.            21

[Ksharp]

%let len=20;

data test ;
  input long $char40.;
cards;
This is longer than 20 characters. 
This one, is exactly 20 characters.
But this short.
;
data want;
 set test;
 n+1;
 length want $ 400  ;
 do i=1 to countw(long,' ');
   _want=want;
   temp=scan(long,i,' ');
   want=catx(' ',want,temp);
   if length(want)>&len. then do;want=_want;output;want=temp; end;
 end;
 output;
 drop i temp _want;
run;