-split- was written for precisely this purpose.
Follow with -trim()-.
Nick
[email protected]
David E Moore
> Have you considered -tokenize- using "," as the parse character?
Michael S. Hanson
> I have a (large) set of variables with labels of the (general) form:
>
> Some text, some more text, still more text
> Also some text, lots and lots more text, text
> (etc.)
>
> The commas are the separators of interest to me: I would like to
> extract the sub-strings before, between and after the commas
> (excluding
> the commas and trailing spaces themselves) into three local string
> variables for further use. The number of words in each part of the
> label vary as do the total number of words; hence the -word # of
> `varname'- extended macro does not appear to apply here. The
> closest I
> have come with extended macros is:
>
> local varlbl : variable label `varname'
> local varlbl1 : piece 1 20 of "`varname'"
> local varlbl2 : piece 2 20 of "`varname'"
> local varlbl3 : piece 3 20 of "`varname'"
>
> but this doesn't reliably return the desired substrings (given the
> variation in words (and in word length) between commas) -- 20 here is
> simply an approximate value that works for a particular subset of
> labels. Same with the -nobreak- option. (This code also does not
> strip off the commas.)
>
> So instead of extended macros, I've tried using string functions. I
> suspect that if I knew and understood regular expression syntax, I
> could make use of -regexm- and -regexs- on `varlbl' -- but I don't.
> Instead, the following "works":
>
> local varlbl : variable label `varname'
> local l = length("`varlbl'")
> local c1 = strpos("`varlbl'",",")
> local c2 = strpos(reverse("`varlbl'"),",")
> local varlbl1 = substr("`varlbl'",1,`c1'-1)
> local varlbl2 = substr("`varlbl'",`c1'+2,`l'-`c1'-`c2'-1)
> local varlbl3 = substr("`varlbl'",`l'-`c2'+3,`l')
>
> ... but I'm really hoping to find some alternative code that is
> "cleaner" and more transparent. Any such suggestions are welcome.
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