translate without spacing

[yonib]

If I have this obs: yyy"y www qqq and i want to get yyyy without the space,
what should i do?

[sbb]

Use the COMPRESS function in a SAS DATA step.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[yonib]

It will not solve my problem beacuse if i have yyy"y www qqq and
I will use compress(translate(var,' ' ,'"'));
The result will be this:yyyywwwqqq
And this is not what im looking for.....

[sbb]

Read the DOC on the COMPRESS function and you will see that you can supply the specific character(s) to be compressed.

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

[deleted_user]

use input them to indicate the line number
data temp;
input y 1-5 m ...;
then use compress to compress the variable y
them combine them in the way you like

[Patrick]

The following code does what you asked for.
data _null_;
have='yyy y www qqq ';
have=tranwrd(have,'y y','yy');
put have=;
want=scan(have,1);
put want=;
run;

More general solutions would be possible - especially with RegEx - but you would have to tell us a bit more in detail what the problem is about you want to solve.

[yonib]

Patrick and Sbb ,
Thanks alot for your program ideas.
thay help me alot!!!