Internationalization Compatibility for SAS String Functions

SAS provides string functions and CALL routines that enable you to easily manipulate your character data. Many of the original SAS string functions assume that the size of one character is always one byte. This process works well for data in a single-byte character set (SBCS). However, when some of these functions and CALL routines are used with data in a double-byte character set (DBCS) or multi-byte character set (MBCS), the data is often handled improperly and produce incorrect results.

DBCS encodings require a varying number of bytes to represent each character. MBCS is sometimes used as a synonym for DBCS.

To solve this problem SAS introduced a set of string functions and CALL routines, called K functions, for those string manipulations where DBCS and MBCS data must be handled carefully. This page shows the level of I18N compatibility for each SAS string function. I18N is the abbreviation for internationalization. Compatibility indicates whether a program using a particular string function can be adapted to different languages and locales without program changes.

The user needs to understand the difference between byte-based offset-length and character-based offset-length in order to use the K functions properly. Most K functions require the character-based offset or length. Under SBCS environments, the byte-based unit is identical to character-based unit. However, under DBCS or MBCS environment, there are significant differences, and programmers need to distinguish them. The users might need to change the programming logic in order to use the K functions. Most K functions require strings encoded in current SAS session encoding.

String functions are assigned I18N levels depending on whether the functions can process DBCS, MBCS, or SBCS. Here are descriptions of the levels:

I18N Level 0

This function is designed for SBCS data. Do not use this function to process DBCS or MBCS data.

I18N Level 1

This function should be avoided, if possible, if you are processing DBCS or MBCS data. The I18N Level 1 functions might not work correctly with DBCS or MBCS encodings under certain circumstances.

I18N Level 2

This function can be used for SBCS, DBCS, and MBCS (UTF-8) data.

SAS String Functions

Function	Description	I18N Level 0	I18N Level 1	I18N Level 2
ANYALNUM Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for an alphanumeric character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.			X
ANYALPHA Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for an alphabetic character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.			X
ANYCNTRL Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a control character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYDIGIT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a digit, and returns the first position at which the digit is found.			X
ANYFIRST Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is valid as the first character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYGRAPH Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a graphical character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYLOWER Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a lowercase letter, and returns the first position at which the letter is found.			X
ANYNAME Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is valid in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYPRINT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a printable character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYPUNCT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	searches a character string for a punctuation character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYSPACE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a white-space character (blank, horizontal and vertical tab, carriage return, line feed, and form feed). Returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
ANYUPPER Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for an uppercase letter, and returns the first position at which the letter is found.			X
ANYXDIGIT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a hexadecimal character that represents a digit, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
BYTE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns one character in the ASCII or the EBCDIC collating sequence.	X
CAT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Does not remove leading or trailing blanks, and returns a concatenated character string.			X
CATS Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes leading and trailing blanks, and returns a concatenated character string.	X
CATT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes trailing blanks, and returns a concatenated character string.	X
CATX Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes leading and trailing blanks, inserts delimiters, and returns a character string.	X
CHOOSEC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character value that represents the results of choosing from a list of arguments.			X
CHOOSEN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a numeric value that represents the results of choosing from a list of arguments.			X
COALESCEC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the first nonmissing value from a list of numeric arguments.			X
COALESCEC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character string in ASCII or EBCDIC collating sequence.	X
COMPARE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the position of the leftmost character by which two strings differ, or returns 0 if there is no difference.	X
COMPARE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes multiple blanks from a character string.	X
COMPGED Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the generalized edit distance between two strings.	X
COMPLEV Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the Levenshtein edit distance between two strings.	X
COMPRESS Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character string with specified characters removed from the original string.	X
COUNT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Counts the number of times that a specified substring appears within a character string.		X
COUNTC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Counts the number of characters in a string that appear or do not appear in a list of characters.		X
DEQUOTE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes matching quotation marks from a character string that begins with a quotation mark, and deletes all characters to the right of the closing quotation mark.			X
FIND Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches for a specific substring of characters within a character string.		X
FINDC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a string for any character in a list of characters.		X
HTMLDECODE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Decodes a string that contains HTML numeric character references or HTML character entity references, and returns the decoded string.			X
HTMLENCODE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Encodes characters using HTML character entity references, and returns the encoded string.			X
IFC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character value based on whether an expression is true, false, or missing.			X
IFN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a numeric value based on whether an expression is true, false, or missing.			X
INDEX Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character expression for a string of characters, and returns the position of the string's first character for the first occurrence of the string.	X
INDEXC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character expression for any of the specified characters, and returns the position of that character.	X
INDEXW Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character expression for a string that is specified as a word, and returns the position of the first character in the word.	X
KCOMPARE Function	Returns the result of a comparison of character expressions.			X
KCOMPRESS Function	Removes specified characters from a character expression.			X
KCOUNT Function	Returns the number of double-byte characters in an expression.			X
KCVT Function	Converts data from one type of encoding data to another encoding data.			X
KINDEX Function	Searches a character expression for a string of characters.			X
KINDEXC Function	Searches a character expression for specified characters.			X
KLEFT Function	Left-aligns a character expression by removing unnecessary leading DBCS blanks and SO-SI.			X
KLENGTH Function	Returns the length of an argument.			X
KLOWCASE Function	Converts all letters in an argument to lowercase.			X
KREVERSE Function	Reverses a character expression.			X
KRIGHT Function	Right-aligns a character expression by trimming trailing DBCS blanks and SO-SI.			X
KSCAN Function	Selects a specified word from a character expression.			X
KSTRCAT Function	Concatenates two or more character expressions.			X
KSUBSTR Function	Extracts a substring from an argument.			X
KSUBSTRB Function	Extracts a substring from an argument according to the byte position of the substring in the argument.			X
KTRANSLATE Function	Replaces specific characters in a character expression.			X
KTRIM Function	Removes trailing DBCS blanks and SO-SI from character expressions.			X
KTRUNCATE Function	Truncates a numeric value to a specified length.			X
KUPCASE Function	Converts all letters in an argument to uppercase.			X
KUPDATE Function	Inserts, deletes, and replaces character value contents.			X
KUPDATEB Function	Inserts, deletes, and replaces the contents of the character value according to the byte position of the character value in the argument.			X
KVERIFY Function	Returns the position of the first character that is unique to an expression.			X
LEFT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Left-aligns a character string.	X
LENGTH Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the length of a non-blank character string, excluding trailing blanks, and returns 1 for a blank character string.	X
LENGTHC Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the length of a character string, including trailing blanks.			X
LENGTHM Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the amount of memory (in bytes) that is allocated for a character string.			X
LENGTHN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the length of a character string, excluding trailing blanks.	X
LOWCASE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Converts all letters in an argument to lowercase.			X
MISSING Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a numeric result that indicates whether the argument contains a missing value.			X
NLITERAL Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Converts a character string that you specify to a SAS name literal.			X
NOTALNUM Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a non-alphanumeric character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.			X
NOTALPHA Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a nonalphabetic character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.			X
NOTCNTRL Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is not a control character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTDIGIT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for any character that is not a digit, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTFIRST Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for an invalid first character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTGRAPH Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a non-graphical character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTLOWER Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is not a lowercase letter, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTNAME Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for an invalid character in a SAS variable name under VALIDVARNAME=V7, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTPRINT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a nonprintable character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.	X
NOTPUNCT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is not a punctuation character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.	X
NOTSPACE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	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.	X
NOTUPPER Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is not an uppercase letter, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NOTXDIGIT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Searches a character string for a character that is not a hexadecimal character, and returns the first position at which that character is found.			X
NVALID Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Checks the validity of a character string for use as a SAS variable name.	X
PROPCASE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Converts all words in an argument to proper case.			X
QUOTE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Adds double quotation marks to a character value.			X
RANK Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the position of a character in the ASCII or EBCDIC collating sequence.	X
REPEAT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character value that consists of the first argument repeated n+1 times.		X
REVERSE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Reverses a character string.	X
RIGHT Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Right-aligns a character expression.	X
SCAN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the nth word from a character string.	X
SOUNDEX Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Encodes a string to facilitate searching.	X
SPEDIS Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Determines the likelihood of two words matching, expressed as the asymmetric spelling distance between the two words.	X
STRIP Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a character string with all leading and trailing blanks removed.	X
SUBPAD Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a substring that has a length that you specify, using blank padding if necessary.		X
SUBSTR (left of =) Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Extracts a substring from an argument.	X
SUBSTRN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a substring, allowing a result with a length of zero.		X
TRANSLATE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Replaces specific characters in a character string.	X
TRANTAB FunctionTRANTAB Function	Transcodes data by using the specified translation table.	X
TRANWRD Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Replaces or removes all occurrences of a substring in a character string.			X
TRIM Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes trailing blanks from a character string, and returns one blank if the string is missing.	X
TRIMN Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Removes trailing blanks from character expressions, and returns a string with a length of zero if the expression is missing.	X
UPCASE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Converts all letters in an argument to uppercase.			X
URLDECODE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a string that was decoded using the URL escape syntax.			X
URLENCODE Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns a string that was encoded using the URL escape syntax.			X
VERIFY Function in SAS Functions and CALL Routines: Reference	Returns the position of the first character in a string that is not in any of several other strings.	X