COALESCEC Function

Returns the first non-missing value from a list of character arguments.

Category:	Character
Restriction:	I18N Level 2 functions are designed for use with SBCS, DBCS, and MBCS (UTF8).

Syntax

COALESCEC(argument-1<..., argument-n> )

Required Argument

argument

specifies a character constant, variable, or expression.

Details

Length of Returned Variable

In a DATA step, if the COALESCEC function returns a value to a variable that has not previously been assigned a length, then that variable is given a length of 200 bytes.

The Basics

COALESCEC accepts one or more character arguments. The COALESCEC function checks the value of each argument in the order in which they are listed and returns the first non-missing value. If only one value is listed, then the COALESCEC function returns the value of that argument. A character value is considered missing if it has a length of zero or if all the characters are blank. If all the values of all arguments are missing, then the COALESCEC function returns a string with a length of zero.

Comparisons

The COALESCEC function searches character arguments, whereas the COALESCE function searches numeric arguments.

Example

The following statements produce these results.

SAS Statement	Result
COALESCEC('', 'Hello')	Hello
COALESCEC ('', 'Goodbye', 'Hello')	Goodbye