I am sure there are some formats and informats to do what I am looking for but I can't seem to find the right ones. I need to take a character variable, make a new numeric variable, and then convert it back to the original character.

Here is the real problem:

I have data that is a list of variables that is shown in the range and I need to create a dataset with all of the variables. We are talking about multiple datasets with at least 1000 variables each so this has to be dynamic.

here is a sample of the data:

VARIABLE_RANGE

-----------------------------

A1B1 - A1B5

B354 - B360

I need to get it to look like this:

VARIABLE

----------------

A1B1

A1B2

A1B3

A1B4

A1B5

B354

B355

B356

B357

B358

B359

B360

I have that part taken care of already. I isolated the root and the index and use a loop to output each variable with the incremented index. My problem is that sometimes the index is CHARACTER and SAS can't use that as an index. So I wanted to convert the CHARACTER index to the ASCII form and then convert it back before outputting it but I can't find the right format or informats.

Here is an example of the problem data:

VARIABLE_RANGE

------------------------------

A3A - A3E

Which should come out as:

VARIABLE

----------------

A3A

A3B

A3C

A3D

A3E