Date:         Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:59:17 +0200
Reply-To:     John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         John F Hall <johnfhall@orange.fr>
Subject:      Re: Splitting a string
Comments: To: Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;

Richard

I'll have to try it later on a copy of the file.  I substituted the wrong bit in my amended syntax.  Meanwhile the problem has been sorted.  See my reply to Jon.

John
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Richard Ristow 
  To: John F Hall ; SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
  Sent: Tuesday, September 14, 2010 5:49 PM
  Subject: Re: Splitting a string


  At 03:55 AM 9/14/2010, John F Hall wrote:


    Just tried Richard's original, but it generated an error.  
     

    COMPUTE #Buffer=LTRIM (Input).
    Error # 4285 in column 24. Text: Input
    Incorrect variable name: either the name is more than 64 characters, or it is not defined by a previous command.

    Execution of this command stops.

    Tried again with a couple of variations, but new variables contain only sysmis.  Perhaps I should have said I'm reading from a *.sav file and the variable to split is called student.

  That'll do it, all right. You'll see that, in my test data, I named the variable to split "Input", since you hadn't given another name. So,

    Error # 4285 in column 24. Text: Input
    Incorrect variable name: ... it is not defined by a previous command.

  Nope, in your code "Input" wasn't defined by a previous command, nor part of the input file. Try running my code (I recommend the corrected version), but replacing variable name "Input" by "student". String variable "#Buffer" should be at least as long as variable "student". 

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