Hi SAS Friends,  Am working with a dataset where each field in an "Event Dates" column contains multiple dates in a string with no delimiter.  Each date connects to an "EVENT" in an adjacent column and field.  Like the dates, there are multiple events in each field and no obvious delimiter.  A  sample SAS data file is attached.  The dates and events are in the correct order and sequence within their fields and when looking at them on a screen in EXCEL (the source file) they line up perfectly.  I don't have the data in any other format, unfortunately.  In SAS, the dates become a single string, all with the same format (YYYY/MM/DD) .   Need to create one row per Drug_Name, Date, Event combination, that looks like this: Drug_1 2014/02/20 Withdrawn from Market Drug_1 2004/12/13 License Discontinued Drug_1 2003/07/31 First Launch Drug_1 2003/06/30 First Approval Drug_1 2003/02/24 Orphan Drug Status Granted Drug_1 2001/11/29 New Disease Drug_1 2001/10/29 New Licensee Drug_1 2000/10/01 New Licensing Opportunity Drug_1 1999/06/30 First Filing Drug_1 1999/01/15 New Licensee Drug_1 1998/09/15 Nonproprietary Name Granted Drug_1 1998/02/15 New Licensing Opportunity Drug_1 1996/11/15 Global Status Advance Drug_1 1995/07/15 Drug Added   Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated. Am using SAS ver. 9.4. Thank you ! R.  ... View more

Hi SAS friends,  Am trying to use the index function to locate a string variable " MrgMT"  in a longer string variable " Merge_term " , but it is not working as expected.  Have checked the source datasets for hidden characters and "purged" them with a compress function (used the "KAS" option to keep only alphanumeric characters and some symbols), and viewed them in note pad looking for bad characters, but still no luck.   I've uploaded a sample SAS file with these thee variables.  Here is the code  data lcl.Index_Prob ; set lcl.&FFN._TMP ; Where MrgMT in ("ALBUTEROL", "ACAMPROSATE") and Merge_term in ("4MG OF ALBUTEROL", "ALBUTEROL", "ACAMPROSATE", "ACAMPROSATE (CAMPRAL)"); Merge_No = index(Merge_term, MrgMT) ; keep MrgMT Merge_term Merge_No ; run ; Here is an example of the output, with comments:   Merge_term MrgMT Merge_No Should be 4MG OF ALBUTEROL ALBUTEROL 0 8 ACAMPROSATE ACAMPROSATE 1 OK ! ACAMPROSATE ALBUTEROL 0 OK ! ACAMPROSATE (CAMPRAL) ACAMPROSATE 0 1 ALBUTEROL ALBUTEROL 1 OK!   Any suggestions on why INDEX function is not working?   Thank you !   ... View more