Functions and CALL Routines |
Returns the first character in a character string.
- string
-
specifies a character string.
In a DATA step, the default length of the target variable
for the FIRST function is 1.
The FIRST function returns a string with a length of 1. If string has a length of 0, then the FIRST function returns a
single blank.
The FIRST function returns the same result as CHAR(string, 1) and SUBPAD(string,
1, 1). While the results are the same, the default length of the target variable
is different.
The following example shows the results of using the FIRST function.
options pageno=1 ps=64 ls=80 nodate;
data test;
string1="abc";
result1=first(string1);
string2="";
result2=first(string2);
run;
proc print noobs data=test;
run;
Output from the FIRST Function
The SAS System 1
string1 result1 string2 result2
abc a
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