From my understanding these three statements should be equivalent     CATX('', COL1, COL2, COL3) TRIM(COL1) || TRIM(COL2) || TRIM(COL3) PRXCHANGE('s/\s+//', -1, COL1) || PRXCHANGE('s/\s+//', -1, COL2) || PRXCHANGE('s/\s+//', -1, COL3)   COL1, COL2, and COL3 are characters.   I check for whitespace with:   PRXCHANGE('s/\s/X/', -1, CONCATENATED_COLUMN)   1 and 3 produce equivalent columns but 2 does not.  All three produce trailing whitespace.  I would like to check this column for characters like:   CASE WHEN PRXMATCH('/^0+$/', CONCATENATED_COLUMN) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS FOO But can't because of the whitespace that still appears.  Must I always account for whitespace whenever I do any operation like this?  Something like this:     CASE WHEN PRXMATCH('/^0+(?:\s*)$/', CONCATENATED_COLUMN) THEN 1 ELSE 0 END AS FOO Or:   JOIN ON PRXCHANGE('s/\s+//', -1, TABLE_A.ID) = PRXCHANGE('s/\s+//', -1, TABLE_B.ID) Because I can never be sure CATX or TRIM did their job?  ... View more

I.E a variable length character with no padding.  ... View more

Here's what I'm trying to do:     DATA FOO; INFILE '/path/to/csv/file' DELIMITER = ',' MISSOVER DSD LRECL=32767 FIRSTOBS=2; INFORMAT ID 10.; INFORMAT BAR :$64.; INPUT ID BAR $; RUN; PROC SQL; CREATE TABLE TEST AS SELECT * FROM FOO WHERE BAR IS NULL; QUIT; Still getting rows with blank BAR columns.     Checking to see what's in those columns I do this:     PROC SQL; CREATE TABLE TEST2 AS SELECT ID, PUT(BAR, $HEX32.) FROM FOO WHERE BAR IS NULL; QUIT; And it outputs ASCII space characters.     OK, what if the original file has some spaces in it.  Can I just trim it?  Let's see:   DATA FOO2(KEEP=ID BAR); INFILE '/path/to/csv/file' DELIMITER = ',' MISSOVER DSD LRECL=32767 FIRSTOBS=2; INFORMAT ID 10.; INFORMAT _BAR :$64.; INPUT ID _BAR $; BAR = TRIM(_BAR); RUN; PROC SQL; CREATE TABLE TEST3 AS SELECT ID, PUT(BAR, $HEX32.) FROM FOO2 WHERE BAR IS NULL; QUIT; Nope, apparently not.  Same deal.  ASCII space characters.  TRIM does nothing.  How do I kindly tell SAS to input this file and give it appropriate values?      ... View more

I would like to sort a dataset using PROC SORT based on a character column.  Something equivalent to:   PROC SQL; SELECT * FROM foo ORDER BY CASE some_text_column WHEN 'category a' THEN 1 WHEN 'category b' THEN 2 WHEN 'category c' THEN 3 END; QUIT; ... View more