CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexsas
user1050619
user1050619

Reputation: 20906

sas pattern matching with square brackets evaluation

I have the following SAS code that checks for patterns and flags any error.

I'm sure that it checks for a pattern in field1, but I'm not sure how two square brackets [] are evaluated.

I need to check for invalid values in field1.

sas code:

if prxmatch('/^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_]*$/', strip(&vfiel1)) = 0 then do;
     put "Error is field1"

Upvotes: 0

Views: 337

Answers (1)

rkoopmann
rkoopmann

Reputation: 1136

This regular expression will check for valid-looking SAS name. Specifically, it must start (^) with a letter ([a-zA-Z]) followed by 0 or more (*) letters, numbers, and/or underscores ([a-zA-Z0-9_]) before the end ($).

A better SAS name check would be something along the lines of this:

  • Libnames: ^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]{0,7}$
  • Dataset & variable names: ^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]{0,31}$

Note these allow names to start with an underscore and have max lengths of 8 and 32 characters.

Here is a page on Names in the SAS Language.

Upvotes: 1

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