"<" displaying as "&lt;"

[sasuser110]

Hi, I am using SAS University Edition and trying to import an excel file that has a variable named "group" with two strata: "< 10" and "≥ 10". I am using the lifetest procedure to compare the survival times of these two strata. On my Kaplan Meier curve, I want the legend to show the stratification of "group"; however, instead of "<", it displays "&lt;". The "≥" sign displays fine. The default text coding is set at UTF-8.

Is there any way to change "&lt;" so it displays properly as "<"? My code is below:

PROC IMPORT DATAFILE="/folders/myfolders/file.xlsx"
OUT=WORK.file
DBMS=XLSX
REPLACE;
RUN;

proc lifetest data=file plots=survival;
time years*censor(0);
strata group;
run;

Thanks!

[Tom · Accepted solution]

There was a recent thread saying that SAS had updated the XLSX engine to avoid this.

What version of SAS are you using?

You should be able to fix it by just replacing the character.

data file;
  set file ;
  array _c _character_ ;
  do over _c ;
    _c=transwrd(_c,'&lt;','<');
  end;
run;

Or perhaps use the HTMLDECODE() function instead to catch other potential values.

[sasuser110]

Thank you! Your code fixed the problem. Much appreciated.