Hack 4.10 Removing Leading and Trailing Blanks with the CATX Function

SAS Programming Professionals,

Do you know that you can quickly and easily remove leading and trailing blanks when concatenating character variables together?

If you were thinking “Ah yes, the CATS function!” then give yourself a prize!  However, this tip is really about the CATX function.

The CATX function removes leading and trailing blanks and inserts a separator between the variable values being concatenated.  (The CATS function only removes leading and trailing blanks).   This function is handy for building meaningful character variables from two or more variables—like building a full name from first name, middle name, and last name.

Here is an example:

data names;

firstname  = "       Francis";

middlename = "Scott         ";

lastname   = "   Key        ";

fullname = catx(" ", firstname, middlename, lastname);

run;

proc print noobs data=names;

run;

You can see that FIRSTNAME has leading blanks, MIDDLENAME has trailing blanks, and LASTNAME has both leading and trailing blanks.  The CATX function specifies that the separator should be a blank.  So, the result of the PROC PRINT is:

     firstname    middlename    lastname         fullname

     Francis       Scott         Key       Francis Scott Key

If you like the CATX function, check out its brothers, the CAT, CATT, and CATS functions!

Best of luck in all your SAS endeavors!

---MMMMIIIIKKKKEEEE

(aka Michael A. Raithel)

Author of the new cult classic for computer programmers:  It Only Hurts When I Hit <ENTER>
Print edition:  http://tinyurl.com/z8bzx2e 
Kindle edition: http://tinyurl.com/zypgqa7 

The hack above is an excerpt from the book:  Did You Know That?  Essential Hacks for Clever SAS Programmers

http://tinyurl.com/zfd67rh