Ashim Kapoor wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I posted about this a couple of days ago.
>
> Let me tell you my problem. I have a string variable , sometimes at
> the end of many observations I seem to have an extra space character
> which does not go away when I use trim.
>
> Also I have tried adding a " dummy" to all the observations and then
> doing an itrim. But some observations continue to have 2 spaces
> between the 2nd last and last word. Nothing seems to be working!
>
> Any tips ?
>
Further the above seems to describe two separate problems. In the first
instance you are saying that you have unwanted spaces at the end of
observations, but then you go on to describe double spaces between words
within a variable.
So is it that you have a variable with observations 'foo bar ' (<-- note
space at end) or is it that you have observations with 'foo bar'
(<---note the double spaces between words within the observation).
If its the former then there is no reason why the -trim()- function
won't work. If its the later then -trim()- won't work at removing the
double spaces since it only acts on spaces at the start or end of a
variable, and instead you should look at using -subinstr([varname], "
", " ")- to replace double spaces to single spaces.
If you've a mixture of the two examples then you can use
-trim(subinstr([varname], " ", " "))- to do both in one step.
Neil
--
"We should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler" - Anon (not Albert Einstein)
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