Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 10:03:14 -0500
Reply-To: mdmiller@syr.edu
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU>
From: "Mark D. H. Miller" <mdmiller@SYR.EDU>
Organization: Syracuse University, FACSS
Subject: Re: Splitting a variable into two variables based on a character
somewhere in the field
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Jim Linck wrote:
>
> Seems like the pointer, input and substring commands may be able to be used
> together to handle this task; however, I'm not sure how to do it.
>
> I have a Name which I read in originally as part of an overall .csv file.
> The name is in the format last, first. What I want to do is create two
> variables from the Name variable, last and first where last contains all
> info before the command and first contains all info after the comma.
> Anybody know how to do that?
>
> Thanks.
Use the SCAN function. which separates a character expression
into words and returns the Nth word
SCAN( argument, n <,delimiters> )
where argument is a valid SAS character expression,
n is a valid SAS numeric expression,
and delimiter is the character(s) you wish to use
to delimit words.
If delimiter is omitted, the following are treated
as delimiters (on ASCII systems)
blank . < + | & ! $ * ) ; ^ / , % > \
Since you are parsing a name which could have embedded periods,
to explicitly follow the rule you describe would require
username= 'lastname, firstname' ; *sample data;
lname = scan(username,1,',');
fname = scan(username,2,',');
--
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
Mark D. H. Miller <mdmiller@syr.edu>
Faculty Computing and Media Services Tel: 315.443-2143
272 Newhouse Communications Center II Fax: 315.443-5658
Syracuse University Syracuse, NY 13244-2110
*-------------------------------------------------------------*
| 
