Date:         Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:35:18 +0200
Reply-To:     John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Subject:      Re: Splitting a string
Comments: To: kylie.lange@adelaide.edu.au
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

Kylie, Richard

Barely had time to get my breakfast and already 2 solutions.  Richard's will save some complex arithmetic, but Kylie's syntax will come in handy should I need something similar in future.  Always something new to learn!

Mille fois merci.

John
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Kylie Lange 
  To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 8:05 AM
  Subject: Re: Splitting a string



  Hi John,

  If it is always the last three characters of the string that hold the digits
  you need, then the following should create the numeric variable you can do
  the arithmetic on:

  COMPUTE y=NUMBER(CHAR.SUBSTR(str,CHAR.LENGTH(str)-2),f8).

  Cheers,
  Kylie.


  -----Original Message-----
  From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
  John F Hall
  Sent: Tuesday, 14 September 2010 3:23 PM
  To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
  Subject: Splitting a string

  Not often I ask for advice, but I am helping someone out with a data set
  which has a string variable that needs splitting.  The strings consist of
  one letter ot two, followed by three digits, each of which indicates
  something different.  I've sorted the letter codes manually, but I still
  need to generate three new variables, one for each digit eg:

  f502       5 0 2
  f503       5 0 3
  f504       5 0 2
  f521       5 2 1
  fy101     1 0 1
  fy102     1 0 2
  fy111     1 1 1
  fy121     1 2 1

  I could do it manually in the Data Editor by scrolling down and deleting the
  letters  then creating three variables arithmetically with

  compute x = trunc (y/100)
  compute z = mod (y/10)

  etc etc, but someone out there will have a much neater solution.

  John Hall
  johnfhall@orange.fr
  http://surveyresearch.weebly.com

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