How to Extract Part of a String Before a Delimiter

[ngunan0921]

Hi there! 

I'm asked to do the following below in SAS Visual Analytics. I'm using SAS Viya for Learners 3.5. 

This is what I have so far. it looks good in the beginning but once I reach the later parts of the data, the string I want isn't correctly extracted. I need assistance on how to extract part of a string before a delimiter. In this case, before the colon. 

Thanks in advance. 

[Stu_SAS]

You are very close! This looks like a learning exercise so I won't give the answer away entirely, but I'll give you a hint. Consider that the length of the substring before : varies in length:

10-5:23.6,-51.2
10-100:23.6,-51.2

If you could find the position of the :, then you would know exactly how long your substring needs to be:

10-5:23.6,-51.2
    ^
    5

10-100:23.6,-51.2
      ^
      7

Is there another function that can help you do this?

[ngunan0921]

It took me some time to figure it out. I thought it was the getlength at first but I realized it's the findchar. 

thanks for the hint!

[Stu_SAS]

Bingo! Awesome work 😃

Substring('from_loc'n, 1, FindChar('from_loc'n, ':')-1)