"Richard A. DeVenezia" <radevenz@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:bgdsa7$n6494$1@ID-168040.news.uni-berlin.de... > I have a string containing multiple spaces, that typically would be > compressed out using COMPBL. However, I don't want to remove multiple spaces > if they are within quotes. > > Any ideas how to achieve this ? > > -- > Richard A. DeVenezia >

Put out a little bird seed and you get little birdies...

rxparse and rxchange

data a; infile cards pad truncover ; length string $100; input string $ 1-100 ; cards; 1 This is a test "should leave two spaces here" but not here 2 No double quotes in this string 3 Name = 'O''Connor, Mary' and Sex=" Female " 4 Comment = 'Agreed "in principal"' 5 Comment = 'Agreed "in principal"' 6 Comment = 'Agreed in principal' 7 Comment = 'Agreed in principal' 8 Comment = "Agreed ""in principal""" 9 Mismatched "double quotes in this string", what to do" with it?, let it be part of the compressible stream run;

data b; set a; if _n_=1 then do; retain rx; rx = rxparse( '$q to ==,' || /* don't change quoted strings */ '$w+ to " ",' || /* change strings of white space to a blank */ '?#-1 to =='); /* don't change anything else */ end; call rxchange( rx, 999, string); run;

proc print; run;

-- Richard