Hi Mark

The following syntax works for any 'reasonable' n (the limit comes from the length of newvar which is limited to 255 characters).

DATA LIST LIST /var1(A8). BEGIN DATA . x1 . . x2 x3 . x4 . . END DATA. LIST.

COMPUTE dummy=1. SAVE OUTFILE='c:\temp\mydata.sav'.

SELECT IF LTRIM(RTRIM(var1))<>".". COMPUTE idx=$CASENUM. STRING newvar(A255). DO IF idx=1. COMPUTE newvar=var1. ELSE. COMPUTE newvar=CONCAT(RTRIM(LAG(newvar))," ",var1). END IF. EXECUTE.

COMPUTE dummy=1. ADD FILES FILE=* /BY=dummy /LAST=last. EXECUTE. SELECT IF last=1. SAVE OUTFILE='c:\temp\mystring.sav'. GET FILE='c:\temp\mydata.sav'. MATCH FILES FILE=* /TABLE='c:\temp\mystring.sav' /BY dummy. * Clean up. MATCH FILES FILE=* /DROP=dummy idx. EXECUTE.

HTH

Raynald Levesque rlevesque@videotron.ca Visit my SPSS Pages http://pages.infinit.net/rlevesqu/index.htm

-----Original Message----- From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of Mark Scarr Sent: Monday, October 08, 2001 11:14 PM To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Converting a column of data into a string

Hi All,

Yet another question (apologies)! Again I have been unable to find help online :(

I have a string variable var1 that may contain entries x_1 to x_n interspersed with missing values (n is unknown in advance). I would like to create a new constant string variable newvar which is simply a concatenation of all the non sysmissing values in var1.

var1 newvar . 'x1 x2 x3 x4' x1 'x1 x2 x3 x4' . 'x1 x2 x3 x4' . 'x1 x2 x3 x4' x2 'x1 x2 x3 x4' x3 'x1 x2 x3 x4' . 'x1 x2 x3 x4' x4 'x1 x2 x3 x4' . 'x1 x2 x3 x4' . 'x1 x2 x3 x4'

Many thanks in advance

Mark.