Date:         Tue, 14 Sep 2010 06:58:35 -0600
Reply-To:     Jon K Peck <peck@us.ibm.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Jon K Peck <peck@us.ibm.com>
Subject:      Re: Splitting a string
Comments: To: John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
In-Reply-To:  <AA90C87D8AF5475DA46B4FA3FB4C1246@yourg2asvv4l2m>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

Just for fun, here is a one-command solution using the SPSSINC TRANS
extension command available from Developer Central.  (I know John won't
like this, but here it is anyway.)

spssinc trans result=x y z
/formula 're.search(r"(\d)(\d)(\d)",f).groups()'.

It creates numeric variables x, y, and z each holding a single digit,
where f is the input variable.

Regular expressions such as these provide powerful pattern-based string
manipulation techniques.

Regards,
Jon Peck
SPSS, an IBM Company
peck@us.ibm.com
312-651-3435



From:
John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
To:
SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Date:
09/13/2010 11:58 PM
Subject:
[SPSSX-L] Splitting a string
Sent by:
"SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>



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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