ANYDIGIT and ANYALPHA functions in SAS

[Justin]

ANYDIGIT Function

It searches a character string for a digit, and returns the first position at which the digit is found.

Syntax
ANYDIGIT(string <, start>)
Comparisons
The ANYDIGIT function searches a character string for a digit. The NOTDIGIT function searches a character string for any character that is not a digit.

Examples

The following example uses the ANYDIGIT function to search for a character that is a digit.

 data _null_;
    string='Next = _n_ + 12E3;'  ; 
    j=0;
    do until(j=0);
    j=anydigit(string,j+1);
    if j=0 then put +3 "That's all"; 
    else do;
    c=substr(string,j,1);
    put +3 j= c=;
    end;
    end;
run;

The following lines are written to the SAS log:

j=14 c=1
j=15 c=2
j=17 c=3
That’s all

ANYALPHA Function

On the contrary, AnyAlpha() function searches a character string for an alphabetic character, and returns the first position at which the character is found.

Syntax
ANYALPHA(‘expression‘[, start])

Details
The results of the ANYALPHA function depend directly on the translation table that is in effect (see TRANTAB= Option in SAS Viya National Language Support: Reference Guide ) and indirectly on the ENCODING and the LOCALE options.

The ANYALPHA function searches a string for the first occurrence of any character that is an uppercase or lowercase letter. If such a character is found, ANYALPHA returns the position in the string of that character. If no such character is found, ANYALPHA returns a value of 0.

If you use only one argument, ANYALPHA begins the search at the beginning of the string. If you use two arguments, the absolute value of the second argument, start, specifies the position at which to begin the search. The direction in which to search is determined in the following way:

• If the value of start is positive, the search proceeds to the right.
• If the value of start is negative, the search proceeds to the left.
• If the value of start is less than the negative length of the string, the search begins at the end of the string.

ANYALPHA returns a value of zero when one of the following is true:

• The character that you are searching for is not found.
• The value of start is greater than the length of the string.
• The value of start = 0.

Comparisons
The ANYALPHA function searches a character string for an alphabetic character. The NOTALPHA function searches a character string for a non-alphabetic character.

Reach-out:

Anydigit, nodigit, anyalpha, notalpha, anylower, anyupper.