On Thu, 3 Aug 2006, David L Cassell wrote:

> kviel@EMORY.EDU wrote: > >Greetings, > > > > I have same puzzling failures. I have a file on my Solaris box with the > >following line: > > > > H2r Std. Error: > > > > > >I have tried several lines to recognize this point in the file: > > > >if left( _infile_ ) =: "H2r" ; > >if scan( compress( _infile_ ) , 1 , "." ) = "H2rStd" ; > > > >Does anyone have a clue? I am lost? I was wondering about changinge the > >ENCODING options, but that does not seem to be right. > > > >TIA, > > > >Kevin > > > > Assuming there are unseen characters at the start of each line > (which might happen if you have transferred a PC file without > converting the newline to a unix newline), then you could try > the following bit of Perlery: > > if prxmatch('/^\W*H2r/',_infile_); > > If you don't have SAS 9.1, you will need to separate out the regex > and put it in a PRXPARSE() function. > > The regex is as follows: > > ^ start of string > \W* zero or more non-word characters > H2R the letters H 2 r in sequence > > The \W* will match blanks, tabs, unprintable characters, and other > debris. In fact, \W will match everything except [a-zA-Z0-9_].

David and Mark,

Thanks. I *used* to FTP the file from the Unix system to Windows and process it from there. I never experienced this problem. Yes, INDEX() worked, but I could decipher why the other versions did not. I spent two minutes trying to get the Unix programs more, vi, vim, and nedit to display nonprinting characters, with success. I asked and was told that file is just a plain ASCII file....

I did revert to perl:

if ( /\s*H2r Std/ ){}

Kind regards,

Kevin

Kevin Viel PhD Candidate Department of Epidemiology Rollins School of Public Health Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322