Date:         Fri, 9 Mar 2001 10:42:34 -0500
Reply-To:     Bob Burnham <robert.a.burnham@DARTMOUTH.EDU>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Bob Burnham <robert.a.burnham@DARTMOUTH.EDU>
Organization: Dartmouth College
Subject:      Re: padding with zeros

Hi Mike,

I saw that the substring approach worked well for you, but I thought I'd
give you another option for the next time.  I am often in a situation where
I get data like this, but I prefer to keep the data as a numeric value.
I've found that using a combination of MOD and INT is a quick way of
approximating SUBSTR for numbers.

For example, if I had a survey response of 11010 and I wanted to look at the
answer to the fourth question (in this case a 1), then I'll do the
following:

[1] Move the decimal to that the response that I am interested in is the
last digit.  Since I want the fourth question (out of a total of five), I
just need to move the decimal one place by dividing by 10.  Dividing by 10
gives me 1101.0, so I'll just apply INT, to get 1101.

[2] To get the value of only the last digit, I can use the MOD function like
this MOD(1101, 10).  This gives me only the value of the last number -- the
1 that I was looking for.

Of course, you can automate this all by writing a quick loop:

data survey (keep = r1-r5);
  input resp;
  array r{5};
  do _I_ = 0 to 4;
    r{5 - _I_} = mod((int(resp / 10**_I_)), 10);
  end;
  cards;
0
11010
1101
111
;
  run;

This yields:

R1    R2    R3    R4    R5

 0     0     0     0     0
 1     1     0     1     0
 0     1     1     0     1
 0     0     1     1     1

Hope this helps!!

Bob


--
Bob Burnham
robert.a.burnham@dartmouth.edu
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~bburnham