Hi

I do not have the time to finish it but this gives you the position of the first digit.

DATA LIST FIXED /str1 1-25 (A). BEGIN DATA Bloggs J 10 Smith St Bloggs John 10 Smith St END DATA. LIST.

VECTOR nb(25F1). LOOP cnt=1 TO 25. COMPUTE nb(cnt)=cnt*(1-NMISS(NUMBER(SUBSTR(str1,cnt,cnt),F1))). END LOOP.

Raynald Levesque rlevesque@videotron.ca Visit my SPSS Pages http://pages.infinit.net/rlevesqu/index.htm

-----Original Message----- From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf Of Lisel O'Dwyer Sent: July 24, 2002 5:07 AM To: SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: identify substring

Hi all

I'm still working with names and addresses (aargh!)

Now I need to find the name part of a string consisting of name and address.

eg "Bloggs J 10 Smith St"

needs to be two variables, "Bloggs J" and "10 Smith St".

The obvious answer is to use the location of the first numeric character to split the string (create a substring from position 1 to -1 position of numeric.

But I'm having trouble actually working out the syntax for it!

Any ideas? Thanks!

Liel Dr Lisel O'Dwyer

School of Geography, Population and Environmental Management Flinders University GPO Box 2100 Adelaide, South Australia 5001 http://www.ssn.flinders.edu.au/geog/staff/odwyer.htm IAG home page: http://www.ssn.flinders.edu.au/geog/iag/ Telephone 61 8 8201 2969 Fax 61 8 8201 3521