Language Reference
Character and Formatting Functions
| ANYALNUM | searches a character string for an alphanumeric character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYALPHA | searches a character string for an alphabetic character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYCNTRL | searches a character string for a control character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYDIGIT | searches a character string for a digit and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYFIRST | searches a character string for a character that is valid as the first character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| ANYGRAPH | searches a character string for a graphical character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYLOWER | searches a character string for a lowercase letter and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYNAME | searches a character string for a character that is valid in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| ANYPRINT | searches a character string for a printable character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYPUNCT | searches a character string for a punctuation character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYSPACE | searches a character string for a white-space character (blank, horizontal and vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, form feed) and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYUPPER | searches a character string for an uppercase letter and returns the first position at which it is found |
| ANYXDIGIT | searches a character string for a hexadecimal character that represents a digit and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| BYTE | returns one character in the ASCII or EBCDIC collating sequence |
| CAT | concatenates character strings without removing leading or trailing blanks |
| CATQ | concatenates character or numeric values by using a delimiter to separate items and by adding quotation marks to strings that contain the delimiter |
| CATS | concatenates character strings and removes leading and trailing blanks |
| CALL CATS | concatenates character strings and removes leading and trailing blanks |
| CATT | concatenates character strings and removes trailing blanks |
| CALL CATT | concatenates character strings and removes trailing blanks |
| CATX | concatenates character strings, removes leading and trailing blanks, and inserts separators |
| CALL CATX | concatenates character strings, removes leading and trailing blanks, and inserts separators |
| CHOOSEC | returns a character value that represents the results of choosing from a list of arguments |
| CHOOSEN | returns a numeric value that represents the results of choosing from a list of arguments |
| COLLATE | returns an ASCII or EBCDIC collating sequence character string |
| COMPARE | returns the position of the left-most character by which two strings differ, or returns 0 if there is no difference |
| COMPBL | removes multiple blanks from a character string |
| CALL COMPCOST | sets the costs of operations for later use by the COMPGED function |
| COMPGED | compares two strings by computing the generalized edit distance |
| COMPLEV | compares two strings by computing the Levenshtein edit distance |
| COMPRESS | removes specific characters from a character string |
| COUNT | counts the number of times that a specific substring of characters appears within a character string that you specify |
| COUNTC | counts the number of specific characters that either appear or do not appear within a character string that you specify |
| COUNTW | counts the number of words in a character expression |
| FIND | searches for a specific substring of characters within a character string that you specify |
| FINDC | searches for specific characters that either appear or do not appear within a character string that you specify |
| FINDW | returns the character position of a word in a string, or returns the number of the word in a string |
| FIRST | returns the first character in a character string |
| FMTINFO | retrieves information about a format or informat |
| IFC | returns a character value that matches an expression |
| IFN | returns a numeric value that matches an expression |
| INDEX | searches a character expression for a string of characters |
| INDEXC | searches a character expression for specific characters |
| INDEXW | searches a character expression for a specified string as a word |
| INPUTC | applies a character informat at run time |
| INPUTN | applies a numeric informat at run time |
| LEFT | left aligns a character expression |
| LENGTH | returns the length of a character string |
| LENGTHC | returns the length of a character string, including trailing blanks |
| LENGTHM | returns the amount of memory (in bytes) that is allocated for a character string |
| LENGTHN | returns the length of a nonblank character string, excluding trailing blanks, and returns 0 for a blank character string |
| LOWCASE | converts all letters in an argument to lowercase |
| CALL MISSING | assigns a missing value to the specified character or numeric variable |
| NLITERAL | converts a character string that you specify to a SAS name literal (N-literal) |
| NOTALNUM | searches a character string for a nonalphanumeric character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTALPHA | searches a character string for a nonalphabetic character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTCNTRL | searches a character string for a character that is not a control character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTDIGIT | searches a character string for any character that is not a digit and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NOTFIRST | searches a character string for an invalid first character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NOTGRAPH | searches a character string for a nongraphical character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTLOWER | searches a character string for a character that is not a lowercase letter and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NOTNAME | searches a character string for an invalid character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NOTPRINT | searches a character string for a nonprintable character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTPUNCT | searches a character string for a character that is not a punctuation character and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTSPACE | searches a character string for a character that is not a white-space character (blank, horizontal and vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, form feed) and returns the first position at which it is found |
| NOTUPPER | searches a character string for a character that is not an uppercase letter and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NOTXDIGIT | searches a character string for a character that is not a hexadecimal digit and returns the first position at which that character is found |
| NVALID | checks a character string for validity for use as a SAS variable name in a SAS statement |
| PROPCASE | converts all words in an argument to proper case |
| PUTC | applies a character format at run time |
| PUTN | applies a numeric format at run time |
| REPEAT | repeats a character expression |
| REVERSE | reverses a character expression |
| RIGHT | right aligns a character expression |
| SCAN | selects a given word from a character expression |
| CALL SCAN | returns the position and length of a given word from a character expression |
| ROUNDEX | encodes a string to facilitate searching |
| SPEDIS | determines the likelihood of two words matching, expressed as the asymmetric spelling distance between the two words |
| STRIP | returns a character string with all leading and trailing blanks removed |
| SUBPAD | returns a substring that has specified length and is padded with blanks, if necessary |
| SUBSTRN | returns a substring, allowing a result with a length of zero |
| SUBSTR | extracts substrings of character expressions |
| TRANSLATE | replaces specific characters in a character expression |
| TRANSTRN | replaces or removes all occurrences of a substring in a character string |
| TRANWRD | replaces or removes all occurrences of a word in a character string |
| TRIM | removes trailing blanks from character expressions and returns one blank if the expression is missing |
| TRIMN | removes trailing blanks from character expressions and returns a null string (zero blanks) if the expression is missing |
| UPCASE | converts all letters in an argument to uppercase |
| UUIDGEN | returns the short or binary form of a Universal Unique Identifier (UUID) |
| VERIFY | returns the position of the first character that is unique to an expression |
| WHICHC | searches for a character value that is equal to the first argument, and returns the index of the first matching value |
| WHICHN | searches for a numeric value that is equal to the first argument, and returns the index of the first matching value |
Last updated: July 20, 2026