Date:         Wed, 5 Feb 2003 15:39:43 -0600
Reply-To:     Kevin Myers <KevinMyers@AUSTIN.RR.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Kevin Myers <KevinMyers@AUSTIN.RR.COM>
Subject:      Re: comma delimited field parsing
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

If you can insure that your original strings won't include quoted values
with imbedded commas, then you can go with Michael's approach of using
tranwrd to pre-process the string before passing it into scan().  However,
in the more general case that won't work because it will alter any values
within quotes that include embedded commas.

s/KAM


----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Patridge" <Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.sas-l
To: <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 2:47 PM
Subject: Re: comma delimited field parsing


> Michelle,
>
> In the documentation of SAS, here is what I found:
>
> /*** SCAN FUNCTION:
> SAS Language - Version 6 - Chapter 11 - Page 595
> Leading Delimiters before the first word have no effect.  If there are
> two or more contiguous delimiters, SCAN treats them as one.
> ***/
>
>
> I'll see what I can do to get what you would like.
> Regards,
> Charles Patridge
>
> If you were reading in VAR1 = "a,b,c,d,e,f" from an external file, then
> I would have suggested using the DSD option of the INFILE statement which
> should have worked even if you had such strings as ",,c,,e,f".
>
> but dealing with a SAS variable already in that form requires a different
> solution.