Question

Using SAS 9.3 I want to extract the portion of each string between the “.” (dot) and ‘”‘ (double quote) that follows the dot. For example the result of line one below should be f2015_cnt_cont_line

      <characteristic abc="[2015].f2015_cnt_cont_line" xxxxxxxx="8129" />
      <characteristic abc="[2015].f2015_dbt_cont_line" xxxxxxxx="8134" />
      <characteristic abc="[2015].f2015_ctl_tot_acct_bal" xxxxxxxx="8133" />
      <characteristic abc="[2015].f2015_cnt_comb_line" xxxxxxxx="8118" />
      <characteristic abc="[2015].f2015_dbt_comb_line" xxxxxxxx="8138" />

Does anyone have an example I could use?

Thanks
Dan

Answer 1

Here’s one way:

inner = SCAN(SUBSTR(line,INDEX(line,'.')+1),1,'"');

The inner SUBSTR function skips to the column after the first dot; the outer SCAN function returns the first word delimited by a double quote.