specifies a character
constant, variable, or expression to compress.
Details
Length of Returned Variable
In a DATA step, if the
COMPBL function returns a value to a variable that has not previously
been assigned a length, then the length of that variable defaults
to the length of the first argument.
The Basics
The COMPBL function
removes multiple blanks in a character string by translating each
occurrence of two or more consecutive blanks into a single blank.
Comparisons
The COMPRESS function
removes every occurrence of the specific character from a string.
If you specify a blank as the character to remove from the source
string, the COMPRESS function removes all blanks from the source string,
while the COMPBL function compresses multiple blanks to a single blank
and has no effect on a single blank.
Example
The following SAS statements
produce these results.
SAS Statement
Result
----+----1----+-—-2--
string='Hey
Diddle Diddle';
string=compbl(string);
put string;
Hey Diddle Diddle
string='125 E Main St';
length address $10;
address=compbl(string);
put address;