length of id

[Keval Khichadia]

Hi,
I need to identify cases of a variable aid_id where the length is less than 6. I tried the syntax below but do not get results:
temp.
select if length(aid_id) < 6.
freq aid_id.
Thanks in advance,
Keval

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[Oliver, Richard]

Try this:

select if length(rtrim(aid_id)) < 6.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Keval Khichadia
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 12:19 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: length of id

Hi,
I need to identify cases of a variable aid_id where the length is less than 6. I tried the syntax below but do not get results:
temp.
select if length(aid_id) < 6.
freq aid_id.
Thanks in advance,
Keval

=====================
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[Richard Ristow]

At 01:18 PM 8/5/2008, Keval Khichadia wrote:

>I need to identify cases of a variable aid_id where the length is
>less than 6. I tried the syntax below but do not get results:
>temp.
>select if length(aid_id) < 6.
>freq aid_id.

That's a modest 'gotcha' in SPSS: LENGTH measures the length of the
*whole* string, trailing blanks and all. If you apply it to a string
variable, you get the variable's length, not the length of the values in it.

You use RTRIM to remove the trailing blanks, and *then* use LENGTH:

temp.
select if length(RTRIM(aid_id)) < 6.
freq aid_id.

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[Peck, Jon]

Very old school, Richard(s).

With SPSS 16, there is a whole new set of character-oriented string functions.  They are named with prefix CHAR, and they include
CHAR.LENGTH.

CHAR.LENGTH(var)
returns the length in characters of var with any trailing blanks removed.

We introduced this new set of functions primarily to handle Unicode characters, where the length of a character in bytes can be 1-4 but also to make handling traditional multi-byte character sets such as Japanese, Korean, and the two Chinese code pages more civilized and to avoid traps such as the one that started this thread.

Regards,
Jon Peck

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Richard Ristow
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:43 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] length of id

At 01:18 PM 8/5/2008, Keval Khichadia wrote:

>I need to identify cases of a variable aid_id where the length is
>less than 6. I tried the syntax below but do not get results:
>temp.
>select if length(aid_id) < 6.
>freq aid_id.

That's a modest 'gotcha' in SPSS: LENGTH measures the length of the
*whole* string, trailing blanks and all. If you apply it to a string
variable, you get the variable's length, not the length of the values in it.

You use RTRIM to remove the trailing blanks, and *then* use LENGTH:

temp.
select if length(RTRIM(aid_id)) < 6.
freq aid_id.

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[Oliver, Richard]

"Old school" also works in newer releases, whereas "new school" doesn't work in older releases.

But while we're talking about newer functionality, in Unicode mode (SET UNICODE=YES), the LENGTH function will return the number of bytes in the string, rather than the defined width of the string variable.

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Peck, Jon
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 1:21 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: length of id

Very old school, Richard(s).

With SPSS 16, there is a whole new set of character-oriented string functions.  They are named with prefix CHAR, and they include
CHAR.LENGTH.

CHAR.LENGTH(var)
returns the length in characters of var with any trailing blanks removed.

We introduced this new set of functions primarily to handle Unicode characters, where the length of a character in bytes can be 1-4 but also to make handling traditional multi-byte character sets such as Japanese, Korean, and the two Chinese code pages more civilized and to avoid traps such as the one that started this thread.

Regards,
Jon Peck

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Richard Ristow
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 11:43 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] length of id

At 01:18 PM 8/5/2008, Keval Khichadia wrote:

>I need to identify cases of a variable aid_id where the length is
>less than 6. I tried the syntax below but do not get results:
>temp.
>select if length(aid_id) < 6.
>freq aid_id.

That's a modest 'gotcha' in SPSS: LENGTH measures the length of the
*whole* string, trailing blanks and all. If you apply it to a string
variable, you get the variable's length, not the length of the values in it.

You use RTRIM to remove the trailing blanks, and *then* use LENGTH:

temp.
select if length(RTRIM(aid_id)) < 6.
freq aid_id.

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command. To leave the list, send the command
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For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
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