Date:         Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:55:29 -0700
Reply-To:     "Andrew Z." <ahz001@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Andrew Z." <ahz001@GMAIL.COM>
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Subject:      Parse log contained in one variable
Comments: To: sas-l@uga.edu
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I recently started to learn SAS (9.1/Windows), and now I need to parse
a log.  Read from an ODBC source (with a poor design which I can't
change), each person has a single log with multiple events crammed in
a single variable.  I want to break apart the log into multiple
observations and multiple variables, so I can use it like a database.
I've seen how to do this in SAS from a text file (INFILE/CARDS) but
not from ODBC.  Please point me in the right direction.

An example of the log for one person
4/20/2009 15:46:13 John Smith: I processed transaction foo
4/19/2009 13:10:09 John Doe: Customer asked us to process transaction
foo

If I were using a general purpose language like Python, I would use
split('\n') to split the log into multiple variables.  Then, I would
parse out the date, time, creator's name, and comment using a POSIX or
Perl regular expression.  Then, I would store the parsed data in a new
database table.


Andrew