Jerry,
There's something you don't understand about string variables that is
tripping you up. The command STRING P1A (A30) creates a variable named P1A
as a 30 character wide string variable and fills those 30 characters with 30
spaces. When you right trim P1 and stick the result in P1A, trailing space
characters are shaved off and the remaining characters, including embedded
space characters, are stuffed into P1A. Characters in P1A not replaced
remain as space characters. This is something you need to read up on. Look
at the syntax reference manual in the variables subsection of the universals
section and in the string functions subsection of the same main section.
While you're looking up stuff, look at the Alter type command. This may come
in useful to you.
A better question, maybe, is what are you trying to accomplish doing trim
operation?
Gene Maguin
I'm having difficulty removing trailing blanks from a dataset that I have.
The original data(P1) was downloaded to EXCEL and then I had SPSS read the
dataset. I am using the following syntax to create a new variable (P1A)
which should eliminate the trailing blanks:
STRING P1A (A30).
COMPUTE P1A=RTRIM(P1).
EXECUTE.
However the blanks are still there when I paste values of P1A into syntax.
Any help would be greatly appreciated....
Jerry Weinberg, Ph.D
Director, Office of Institutional Research
_____________________________
St. Thomas University
16401 NW 37th Avenue
Miami Gardens, FL 33054
(305) 474-6886
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