Date:         Tue, 22 Jan 2002 16:29:43 +0100
Reply-To:     Jim Groeneveld <J.Groeneveld@ITGROUPS.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jim Groeneveld <J.Groeneveld@ITGROUPS.COM>
Subject:      Re: Deleting a word in a macro variable
Comments: To: Gunnar Petersson <gunnar.petersson@MEP.KI.SE>
Content-Type: text/plain

Dear Gunnar,

If you want to remove the 7th word for example, do:

%let ListSize = 1;
%do %while (%scan(&formlist,&ListSize,%str( )) ne );
  %let ListSize = %eval(&ListSize+1);
%end;

%let NewList = ;
%do I = 1 %to &ListSize;
  %if (&I ne &Word2Del) %then %let Newlist = &Newlist
%scan(&Newlist,&I,%str( ));
%end;

This concatenates all words, except the one to be deleted, into a new
listvar. If you explicitely want spaces instead, deduce the length of the
word to be deleted and append that number of spaces instead.

HTH

Regards - Jim.
--
Y. (Jim) Groeneveld, MSc      IMRO TRAMARKO       tel. +31 412 407 070
senior statistician,          P.O. Box 1          fax. +31 412 407 080
senior data manager           5350 AA BERGHEM     IMRO TRAMARKO: a CRO
J.Groeneveld@ITGroups.com     the Netherlands     in clinical research

My computer has no idea what I am doing; sometimes the reverse also applies.

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gunnar Petersson [SMTP:gunnar.petersson@MEP.KI.SE]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 3:10 PM
> To:   SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:      Deleting a word in a macro variable
>
> Hi, all,
>
> I have a macro variable loaded with all the variable types and lengths for
> a
> dataset transformed to for example $3 for a character variable and 8 for a
> numeric variable. Now for some variables I don't want their type/length in
> this string. Obviously I can't use translate or tranwrd (because there can
> be lots of 8 and $3 in the string that are significant) and the only way
> to
> tell which to delete is to use the %scan function but how do I delete this
> word (e.g put blanks instead) in the macro variable?
>
> An example:
>
> %let idvar=mlopnr;
>
> %LET idvarnr=%SYSFUNC(varnum(&dsid,&idvar));
>
> %let formstr=$3 8 8 8 8 $24 $3; (in reality loaded by several %sysfunc)
>
> %let delstr=%scan(&formlist,&idvarnr,%str( ));
>
> If idvarnr is 7 I want to delete the last $3 from the string, but I can't
> find out how to do it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> /Gunnar