Concatenate Strings In SAS: The CAT Capabilities Demystified

You’re not alone in the event you’ve ever struggled with concatenating strings in SAS. Conventional strategies, such because the “||” operator, might be cumbersome and liable to errors, making them lower than ultimate for a lot of string manipulation duties. Nonetheless, a easy but highly effective answer can assist you concatenate strings in SAS with ease: the Cat operate.

The Cat operate is a flexible software that means that you can mix a number of strings right into a single string, with a variety of customization choices. It’s simple to make use of and might significantly simplify and streamline your string concatenation duties in SAS. On this publish, we’ll take a better take a look at the Cat operate and the way it may be used to concatenate strings successfully in SAS.

Utilizing || Operator to concatenate strings

One conventional methodology for concatenating strings in SAS is to make use of the “||” operator. This operator means that you can mix two or extra strings by inserting the operator between the strings you need to concatenate. For instance:

knowledge concatenated_strings;
string1 = 'Hiya';
string2 = 'World';
concatenated_string = string1 || string2;
run;

On this instance, the ensuing worth of concatenated_string could be “HelloWorld”.

Word: Every time we use the concatenation operator || or !!, The Size of the resultant string could be the sum of the lengths of all particular person strings we’re including or concatenating.

The “||” operator is a conventional methodology for concatenating strings in SAS, however it might probably current a number of difficulties and limitations. One subject is that utilizing the “||” operator may end up in prolonged and complicated strains of code, particularly when concatenating many strings or when extra superior string manipulation is required. This will make the code troublesome to learn and preserve.

One other downside with utilizing the “||” operator is that it may be liable to errors. It may be simple to neglect so as to add a delimiter between concatenated strings, leading to surprising output. Moreover, the “||” operator might not supply adequate management over the formatting of the ensuing concatenated string, resembling including areas or different separators between strings.

General, whereas the “||” operator is usually a useful gizmo for easy string concatenation duties, it is probably not essentially the most environment friendly or dependable methodology for extra complicated string manipulation in SAS.

Concatenate strings in SAS utilizing the CAT operate

The CAT operate concatenates character variables just like the concatenation operator (||). It doesn’t take away main or trailing blanks and returns a concatenated character string.

Syntax:

CAT( <em>merchandise</em> [, ...<em>merchandise</em>])

Instance:

knowledge Concatenated_Strings;
	var1="    Hiya   ";
	var2="  World   ";
	mixed=cat("*",var1, var2,"*");
run;

On this instance, the CAT operate concatenates the COL1, COL2 and COL3 listed within the parameters:

The 2 columns are concatenated into one.

Word that there are main and trailing areas in all of the var1 and var2 variables.

The spaces are also captured in the concatenated variable:

The CATT Function

The CATT function is similar to the CAT function. However, it removes the trailing spaces before concatenating the variables.

Syntax:

CATT( <em>item</em> [, ...<em>item</em>])

Instance:

knowledge Concatenated_Strings;
	var1="    Hiya   ";
	var2="  World   ";
	mixed=catt("*",var1, var2,"*");
run;

The CATT operate concatenates the variables with the trailing spaces removed:

The CATS Function

The CATS function removes both the leading and trailing spaces before concatenating the variables.

Syntax:

CATT( <em>item</em> [, ...<em>item</em>])

Instance:

knowledge Concatenated_Strings;
	var1="    Hiya   ";
	var2="  World   ";
	mixed=catt("*",var1, var2,"*");
run;

The main and trailing areas are faraway from the var1, and var2 variables before the variables are concatenated. 

There is no space between the two character values in the concatenated variable.

CATQ Function in SAS:

It concatenates two or more characters or numeric strings by adding a delimiter and quotation mark to the string that contains the delimiter. CATQ function is similar to the CAT function, except it also adds quotation marks.

Syntax

CATQ(modifiers <, delimiter>, item-1 <, …, item-n>)

The modifier modifies the action of the CATQ function. Blanks are ignored. You can use the following characters as modifiers:

data Concatenated_Strings;
	var1="    Hello   ";
	var2="  World   ";
	var3="Hello";
	combined1=catq('1',var1, var2);output;
    combined2=catq('2',var1, var2);output;
	combined3=catq('A',var1, var2);output;
	combined4=catq('C',var1, var2);output;
	combined5=catq('ASTD','-',var1, var2,var3);output;
run;

If you do not use the C, D, or H modifiers, CATQ uses a blank as a delimiter.

If you do not specify a quotation mark in the modifier or the 1 or 2 modifiers, CATQ decides for each item argument which type of quotation mark to use, if quotation marks are required. The following rules apply:

• CATQ uses single quotation marks for strings that contain an ampersand (&) or percent (%) sign, or that contain more double quotation marks than single quotation marks.
• CATQ uses double quotation marks for all other strings.

The CATX Function

The CATX function not only trims the beginning and end spaces but also adds a separator between the character values when joining the variables together.

Syntax

CATX(delimiter, <em>item-1</em> <, ... <em>item</em>-n>)

Example:

data Concatenated_Strings;
	var1="    Hello   ";
	var2="  World   ";
	combined=catt("*",var1, var2,"*");
run;

Important points

For all concatenate functions:-

• The Default LENGTH of the returned variable from any CAT function would be 200 bytes if the Length is not previously specified to the assigned variable of the CAT function.
• The returned values from CAT, CATS, CATT, and CAT are usually equivalent to the resultant values of the concatenation operator (with a certain combination like Trim, Left, Strip) except in length.
• CAT, CATS, CATT, and CATX functions are faster than using TRIM and LEFT functions.
• In CATQ, if we do not use C, D, or H as modifiers, then CATQ would use blank as a delimiter

Conclusion

Now that you’ve learned about the benefits and capabilities of the Catx function for concatenating strings in SAS, we encourage you to try it out in your code. Whether a beginner or an experienced SAS user, the CATX function is a valuable tool that can simplify and streamline your string concatenation tasks.

To start with the Catx function, refer to the syntax and examples provided in this post.

Experiment with different combinations of strings and options to see how the CATX function works. You may also want to try using the Catx function in different scenarios, such as merging data values or creating custom labels.

As you gain more experience with the CATX function, you’ll find it a powerful and flexible tool for concatenating strings in SAS. We hope that you find the CATX function as useful and efficient as we do and that it becomes a go-to function in your SAS code.