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Functions and CALL Routines

ANYALPHA Function



Searches a character string for an alphabetic character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.
Category: Character
Restriction: I18N Level 2

Syntax
Arguments
Details
Comparisons
Examples
Example 1: Searching a String for Alphabetic Characters
Example 2: Identifying Control Characters by Using the ANYALPHA Function
See Also

Syntax

ANYALPHA(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 results of the ANYALPHA function depend directly on the translation table that is in effect (see TRANTAB System Option) and indirectly on the ENCODING System Optionand the LOCALE System Option in SAS National Language Support (NLS): Reference Guide.

The ANYALPHA function searches a string for the first occurrence of any character that is an uppercase or lowercase letter. If such a character is found, ANYALPHA returns the position in the string of that character. If no such character is found, ANYALPHA returns a value of 0.

If you use only one argument, ANYALPHA 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:

ANYALPHA returns a value of zero when one of the following is true:


Comparisons

The ANYALPHA function searches a character string for an alphabetic character. The NOTALPHA function searches a character string for a non-alphabetic character.


Examples


Example 1: Searching a String for Alphabetic Characters

The following example uses the ANYALPHA function to search a string from left to right for alphabetic characters.

data _null_;    
   string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;';  
   j=0;  
   do until(j=0);  
      j=anyalpha(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=9 c=n
   j=16 c=E
   That's all


Example 2: Identifying Control Characters by Using the ANYALPHA Function

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

data test; 
do dec=0 to 255;
   byte=byte(dec);
   hex=put(dec,hex2.);
   anyalpha=anyalpha(byte);
   output;
 end;

 proc print data=test;
 run;


See Also

Function:

NOTALPHA Function

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