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Date:         Tue, 25 Jul 2006 11:00:31 -0500
Reply-To:     "Oliver, Richard" <roliver@SPSS.COM>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Oliver, Richard" <roliver@SPSS.COM>
Subject:      Re: CONCAT
Comments: To: Spousta Jan <JSpousta@CSAS.CZ>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

Good point. A frequent source of confusion with concatenating the values of string variables is that all string variable values are right-padded to the defined width of the string; so an A8 variable with a value of "A" is really "A       ".  The RTRIM function returns just the "A" without the trailing blanks. This is a factor for string manipulations such as concatenation, but not for conditional expressions. For example IF stringvar="A" will return true for the above example value, regardless of the defined string width.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Spousta Jan
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 10:30 AM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: CONCAT

Hi Jonathan,

Is the variable Descr long enough? Did you tried to use rtrim?

COMPUTE Descr = CONCAT ("SW ",rtrim(crsno),"-",rtrim(sec)) .

Greetings

Jan

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Havey
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2006 5:27 PM
To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: CONCAT

I'm having trouble getting CONCAT to work with more than two items.



COMPUTE Descr = CONCAT ("SW ",crsno,"-",sec) .  This successfully concatenates "SW " and the variable crsno, but stops there.  The same problem occurs with using just variables.



Jonathan Havey