splitting alphanumeric variable

[Muir Houston]

Hi listers,

I know I have seen a solution, but could not find it in the archive

 

I have a variable which contains two parts separated by a '/' so the
first part contains information about a district while the second part
identifies a school within that district. How can I separate this
variable into two variables one for district, one for school?

 

E.g.:

ED1/017

ED9/034  

ED11/004                                              

DU10/011                        

 

 

ADVthanksANCE

Muir

 

 

 

Muir Houston

Research Fellow

Institute of Education

University of Stirling

FK9 4LA

 

01786 46 7615

 


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[Maguin, Eugene]

Muir,

The basic operation is to find the location of the / and use that location
to define your first and second substring extractions.

Compute len=index(x,'/')
String y z(a??) define to fit the needed width.
Compute y=substr(x,1,len-1).
Compute z=substr(x,len+1,???). Whatever length the second string is to be.

Gene Maguin

[Richard Ristow]

At 06:55 AM 3/2/2007, Muir Houston wrote:

>I have a variable which contains two parts separated by a '/' so the
>first part contains information about a district while the second part
>identifies a school within that district. How can I separate this
>variable into two variables one for district, one for school?

SPSS 15 draft output <WRR:not saved separately>:


NEW FILE.
DATA LIST LIST /SchlDstr (A12).
BEGIN DATA
ED1/017
ED9/034
ED11/004
DU10/011
END DATA.

STRING  District (A8).
NUMERIC School   (N3).
STRING  #SchStr  (A8).

COMPUTE #Slash = INDEX(SchlDstr,'/').
DO IF   #Slash EQ 0.
.  COMPUTE District = SchlDstr.
.  COMPUTE School   = $SYSMIS.
ELSE.
.  COMPUTE District = SUBSTR(SchlDstr,1,#Slash-1).
.  COMPUTE #SchStr  = SUBSTR(SchlDstr,#Slash+1).
.  COMPUTE School   = NUMBER(#SchStr,F8).
END IF.

LIST.

List
|-----------------------------|---------------------------|
|Output Created               |02-MAR-2007 09:32:44       |
|-----------------------------|---------------------------|
SchlDstr     District School

ED1/017      ED1        017
ED9/034      ED9        034
ED11/004     ED11       004
DU10/011     DU10       011

Number of cases read:  4    Number of cases listed:  4