Functions and CALL Routines

CALL CATS Routine

Concatenates character strings and removes leading and trailing blanks

Category:

Character

Syntax
Arguments
Details
Comparisons
Examples
See Also

Syntax

CALL CATS(result <, string-1, ...string-n>);

Arguments

result: specifies a SAS variable.
string: specifies a SAS character string.

Details

The CALL CATS routine returns the result in the first argument, result. The routine appends the values of the arguments that follow to result. If the length of result is not large enough to contain the entire result, SAS

writes a warning message to the log stating that the result was truncated
writes a note to the log that shows the location of the function call and lists the argument that caused the truncation, except in SQL or in a WHERE clause
sets _ERROR_ to 1 in the DATA step, except in a WHERE clause.

The CALL CATS routine removes leading and trailing blanks from numeric arguments after it formats the numeric value with the BEST. format.

Comparisons

The results of the CALL CATS, CALL CATT, and CALL CATX routines are usually equivalent to statements that use the concatenation operator (||) and the TRIM and LEFT functions. However, using the CALL CATS, CALL CATT, and CALL CATX routines is faster than using TRIM and LEFT.

The following table shows statements that are equivalent to CALL CATS, CALL CATT, and CALL CATX. The variables X1 through X4 specify character variables, and SP specifies a separator, such as a blank or comma.

CALL Routine	Equivalent Statement
CALL CATS(res, OF X1-X4);	res=TRIM(LEFT(X1))\|\|TRIM(LEFT(X2))\|\|TRIM(LEFT(X3))\|\| TRIM(LEFT(X4));
CALL CATT(OF X1-X4);	X1=TRIM(X1)\|\|TRIM(X2)\|\|TRIM(X3)\|\|TRIM(X4);
CALL CATX(SP, OF X1-X4); *	X1=TRIM(LEFT(X1))\|\|SP\|\|TRIM(LEFT(X2))\|\|SP\|\| TRIM(LEFT(X3))\|\|SP\|\|TRIM(LEFT(X4));
* If any of the arguments is blank, the results that are produced by CALL CATX differ slightly from the results that are produced by the concatenated code. In this case, CALL CATX omits the corresponding separator. For example, CALL CATX("+","X"," ", "Z"," "); produces X+Z .

Examples

The following example shows how the CALL CATS routine concatenates strings.

data _null_;
   length answer $ 36;
   x='Athens is t  '; 
   y=' he Olym   ';
   z='   pic site for 2004. ';
   call cats(answer,x,y,z);
   put answer;
run;

The following line is written to the SAS log:

   ----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5----+----6----+----7
   Athens is the Olympic site for 2004.