Functions and CALL Routines

ANYDIGIT Function

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

Category:	Character
Restriction:	I18N Level 2

Syntax
Arguments
Details
Comparisons
Examples
See Also

Syntax

ANYDIGIT(string <,start>)

Arguments

string: is the character constant, variable, or expression to search.
start: is an optional integer that specifies the position at which the search should start and the direction in which to search.

Details

The ANYDIGIT function does not depend on the TRANTAB, ENCODING, or LOCALE options.

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

If you use only one argument, ANYDIGIT 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 the following way:

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.

ANYDIGIT returns a value of zero when one of the following 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 ANYDIGIT function searches a character string for a digit. The NOTDIGIT function searches a character string for any character that is not a digit.

Examples

The following example uses the ANYDIGIT function to search for a character that is a digit.

data _null_;
   string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;'; 
   j=0;
   do until(j=0);
      j=anydigit(string,j+1);
      if j=0 then put +3 "That's all";
      else do;
         c=substr(string,j,1);
         put +3 j= c=;
      end;
   end;
run;

The following lines are written to the SAS log:

   j=14 c=1
   j=15 c=2
   j=17 c=3
   That's all