SAS | COMPRESS Function with Examples

The COMPRESS function in SAS is used to remove certain characters from a given string. It can also be used to remove consecutive occurrences of a particular character.

The syntax of the COMPRESS function is as follows:

COMPRESS(string, <characters>)

Here, string is the input string that you want to remove certain characters from. The characters argument is optional and specifies the characters that you want to remove from the input string.

Let's see some examples to further understand how the COMPRESS function works:

Example 1: Removing Spaces from a String

Suppose we have a string my_string which contains spaces. We want to remove these spaces and get the resulting string.

data _null_;
  my_string = 'This is a string with spaces';
  no_spaces = COMPRESS(my_string, ' ');

  put no_spaces;
run;

Here, we have used the COMPRESS function to remove spaces from the my_string variable. The resulting string after removing spaces is stored in the no_spaces variable.

The put statement is used to display the resulting string.

Example 2: Removing Multiple Characters from a String

Suppose we have a string my_string which contains a combination of characters that we want to remove. We can use the COMPRESS function with multiple characters to remove them:

data _null_;
  my_string = 'AaBbCcDdEeFf';
  no_chars = COMPRESS(my_string, 'abcde');

  put no_chars;
run;

Here, we have used the COMPRESS function to remove the characters 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', and 'e' from the my_string variable. The resulting string after removing these characters is stored in the no_chars variable.

The put statement is used to display the resulting string.

Example 3: Removing Consecutive Occurrences of a Character

Suppose we have a string my_string which contains consecutive occurrences of a particular character. We want to remove these occurrences and get the resulting string.

data _null_;
  my_string = 'AAAABBBCCCDDDD';
  no_consecutive = COMPRESS(my_string, 'A', 'kd');

  put no_consecutive;
run;

Here, we have used the COMPRESS function to remove consecutive occurrences of the character 'A' from the my_string variable. The resulting string after removing these consecutive occurrences is stored in the no_consecutive variable.

The second argument, 'kd', is included to denote that the search should be case-insensitive.

The put statement is used to display the resulting string.

Conclusion

The COMPRESS function in SAS can be incredibly useful in manipulating strings. With a few arguments, we can remove certain characters from a string, enabling us to clean and transform our data with ease.