ANYPRINT Function

Searches a character string for a printable character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.

Categories:	Character
Categories:	CAS
Restriction:	This function is assigned an I18N Level 1 status. If possible, avoid I18N Level 1 functions if you are using a non-English language. Under certain circumstances, the I18N Level 1 functions might not work correctly with Double-Byte Character Set (DBCS) or Multi-Byte Character Set (MBCS) encodings. For more information, see Internationalization Compatibility.
Note:	This function supports the VARCHAR type.

Table of Contents

Syntax

ANYPRINT(string <,start>)

Required Argument

string

is the character constant, variable, or expression to search.

Optional Argument

start

is an optional integer that specifies the position at which the search should start and the direction in which to search.

Details

The results of the ANYPRINT function depend directly on the translation table that is in effect (see TRANTAB= System Option in SAS National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide ) and indirectly on the ENCODING and LOCALE system options.

The ANYPRINT function searches a string for the first occurrence of a printable character. If such a character is found, ANYPRINT returns the position in the string of that character. If no such character is found, ANYPRINT returns a value of 0.

If you use only one argument, or if the second argument has a missing value, ANYPRINT begins the search at the beginning of the string. If you use two arguments, the absolute value of the second argument, start, specifies the position at which to begin the search. The direction in which to search is determined in one of these ways:

If the value of start is positive, the search proceeds to the right.
If the value of start is negative, the search proceeds to the left.
If the value of start is less than the negative length of the string, the search begins at the end of the string.

ANYPRINT returns a value of zero when one of these conditions is true:

The character that you are searching for is not found.
The value of start is greater than the length of the string.
The value of start=0.

Comparisons

The ANYPRINT function searches a character string for a printable character. The NOTPRINT function searches a character string for a nonprintable character.

Examples

Example 1: Searching a String for a Printable Character

The following example uses the ANYPRINT function to search a string for printable characters.

data _null_;
   string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;';
   do j=1 to length(strip(string));
   c=substr(string,j,1);
   put +3 j= c=;
end;
   put +3 "That's all";
run;

data _null_;
   string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;';
   do j=1 to length(strip(string));
   c=substr(string,j,1);
   put +3 j= c=;
end;
   put +3 "That's all";
run;

The preceding statements produce these results:

   j=1 c=N
   j=2 c=e
   j=3 c=x
   j=4 c=t
   j=5 c= 
   j=6 c==
   j=7 c= 
   j=8 c=_
   j=9 c=n
   j=10 c=_
   j=11 c= 
   j=12 c=+
   j=13 c= 
   j=14 c=1
   j=15 c=2
   j=16 c=E
   j=17 c=3
   j=18 c=;
   That's all

Example 2: Identifying Control Characters by Using the ANYPRINT Function

You can execute the following program to show the control characters that are identified by the ANYPRINT function.

data test; 
do dec=0 to 255;
   byte=byte(dec);
   hex=put(dec,hex2.);
   anyprint=anyprint(byte);
   output;
 end;

 proc print data=test;
 run;

data test; 
do dec=0 to 255;
   byte=byte(dec);
   hex=put(dec,hex2.);
   anyprint=anyprint(byte);
   output;
 end;

 proc print data=test;
 run;