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Text to SAS Variable Name

/ Published in: SAS
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Useful functions to ensure (99% of the time...) that a piece of text can be used to name a SAS variable. NOTE: This won't work with SAS literals.

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  1. data _null_;
  2.   name="1.   Long text with no. at start - and some double spaces";
  3.  
  4.   name = compress(strip(name), " ", 'kn');         ** Keep numbers, underscore character and letters (A - Z, a - z);
  5.   name = translate(compbl(strip(name)),'_'," ");   ** Convert dupe blanks to single and replace blanks with underscore;
  6.   name = substrn(strip(name), 1, 31);              ** Keep the first 31 chars (var name limit is 32);
  7.   if input(substr(strip(name),1,1), ?? 3.) then name = "_"||name;  ** Add "_" to names that start with a number;
  8.   put name=;
  9.  
  10. run;

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