Date:         Tue, 6 Dec 2005 21:51:43 -0800
Reply-To:     Dale McLerran <stringplayer_2@YAHOO.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Dale McLerran <stringplayer_2@YAHOO.COM>
Subject:      Re: Wild card equivalent in SAS ?
In-Reply-To:  <BAY103-F203C9CA47D3681525699C2B0430@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

--- David L Cassell <davidlcassell@MSN.COM> wrote:

> stringplayer_2@YAHOO.COM replied:
> >David Cassell will undoubtedly offer up a Perl regular
> >expression (PRX??? function) which will accomplish the
> >identification and replacement all implemented in a single
> >call routine.  It will be very elegant, but if you don't
> >know PRX functions, it will take you the better part of
> >a week to figure out just how the function works.
>
> I'm hurt.  I thought that my PRX posts were as clear as water.  :-)
> :-)
>
> If our poster has 9.1, he can stuff the regex inside the PRXMATCH()
> function
> and do this in one line of UNTESTED code:
>
>   if prxmatch('/mening\.\w+\.W135/', VarToBeChecked);
>
>
> Now isn't that simple?  The regex inside the forward slashes says:
>
> mening    the letters 'mening'
> \.        a real period
> \w+       one or more 'word' characters: A-Z, a-z, 0-9, or _
> \.        another real period
> W135      the sequence 'W135'
>
> I personally prefer some error checking.  The below code works as
> long as
> you have
> SAS 9:
>
>
> data newstuff;
>   retain re;
>   set oldstuff;
>   if _n_=1 then do;
>     re = prxparse('/mening\.\w+\.W135/');
>     if missing(re) then do; putlog 'ERROR: evil regex loose!'; stop;
> end;
>     end;
>   if prxmatch(re, VarToBeChecked);
>   run;
>

I tossed David a lazy fastball with no movement on the
pitch and he belted it out of the park.  But let's see what
he can do with a curve ball.

Suppose that the text between 'mening.' and '.W135' contains
characters other that a-z, A-Z, 0-9, and _.  The original
poster did not indicate that TEXT was just digits and/or
letters of the alphabet.  Suppose that TEXT contains some
parentheses or commas or periods.  The w+ will not match
those characters, so we would miss lines like

    mening.().W135
    mening.123.4.W135

Is there a simple wild card structure which would match
all characters that appeared between 'mening.' and '.W135'?

Dale




---------------------------------------
Dale McLerran
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
mailto: dmclerra@NO_SPAMfhcrc.org
Ph:  (206) 667-2926
Fax: (206) 667-5977
---------------------------------------



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