NOTSPACE Function

Searches a character string for a character that is not a white-space character (blank, horizontal and vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, and form feed), and returns the first position at which that character is found.

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

Syntax

NOTSPACE(string <,start> )

Required Argument

string

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

Optional Argument

start

is an optional numeric constant, variable, or expression with an integer value that specifies the position at which the search should start and the direction in which to search.

Details

The results of the NOTSPACE 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 the LOCALE system options.

The NOTSPACE function searches a string for the first occurrence of a character that is not a blank, horizontal tab, vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, or form feed. If such a character is found, NOTSPACE returns the position in the string of that character. If no such character is found, NOTSPACE returns a value of 0.

If you use only one argument, NOTSPACE 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.

NOTSPACE 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 NOTSPACE function searches a character string for the first occurrence of a character that is not a blank, horizontal tab, vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, or form feed. The ANYSPACE function searches a character string for the first occurrence of a character that is a blank, horizontal tab, vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, or form feed.

Examples

Example 1: Searching a String for a Character That Is Not a White-Space Character

The following example uses the NOTSPACE function to search a string for a character that is not a white-space character.

data _null_;    
   string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;';  
   j=0;  
   do until(j=0);  
      j=notspace(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=1 c=N
   j=2 c=e
   j=3 c=x
   j=4 c=t
   j=6 c==
   j=8 c=_
   j=9 c=n
   j=10 c=_
   j=12 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 NOTSPACE Function

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

data test; 
do dec=0 to 255;
   byte=byte(dec);
   hex=put(dec,hex2.);
   notspace=notspace(byte);
   output;
 end;
 proc print data=test;
 run;