Date:         Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:50:51 -0600
Reply-To:     Joe Matise <snoopy369@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Joe Matise <snoopy369@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: efficient way to write more than one string identified into
              another variable
Comments: To: D T <sasandstats@live.com>
In-Reply-To:  <BLU132-W1532ADF548EBF23E97DD75C8320@phx.gbl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Pretty sure there's a more elegant way to do it, but could you something
like

do until not(prxmatch(reg1,comment);
  dairy = prxposn(reg1,1,comment);
  comment = [rest of comment];
end;

Not remembering off the top of my head how to do that second line, but I
don't think it's hard, just too early in the morning.

-Joe

On Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 8:34 AM, D T <sasandstats@live.com> wrote:

>   I am using perl regular expressions in SAS to extract text from a
> variable with a varying number of comments.
>   I would like to be able to write more than one string identified into
> another variable. Can anyone suggest an
>   efficient way to do this?
>
>   In my example a search string such as:
>
> prxparse('/(milk\b|cheese\b|yoghurt\b|cheddar\b|cream\b\scheese\b|cream\b)/i')
> would search for all dairy,
>   and would have several hits for id 1 and 5. How do I get them most
> efficiently into variable dairy?
>
>
>   Here is the example:
>
>   data start;
>      length comment $50;
>      input id comment &;
>      cards;
>      1 milk, cheese bacon
>      2 oranges/yogurt
>      3 cheddar meatballs
>      4 bread
>      5 yogurt cream cheese, cream
>   ;
>
>   data end;
>     set start;
>
>     retain reg1;
>
>    if _N_=1 then do;
>
> reg1=prxparse('/(milk\b|cheese\b|yogurt\b|cheddar\b|cream\b\scheese\b|cream\b)/i');
>    end;
>
>     if prxmatch(reg1,comment) then do;
>     dairy=prxposn(reg1,1,comment);
>     end;
>
>  run;
>
>   data end should look like this:
>
>   id    dairy            meats        fruit        grains
>    1 milk, cheese     bacon
>    2    yoghurt                     oranges/
>    3    cheddar       meatballs
>    4                                                   bread
>    5    yoghurt cream cheese, cream
>
>    Thanks!
>
>    D.T.
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