subinstr brainfart

[Matt Price]

I have a string variable that needs a digit added.

The first six values shown below are what this variable "should" look like, but for some reason, about 200 records that should end with a "1" had the 1 removed.

I have attempted this:

replace aparticipant_id = subinstr(aparticipant_id, "*-0", "*-01", 1)

and this (assuming maybe that the "1" was replaced with an extra space " " at the end? Should I use trim?):

replace aparticipant_id = subinstr(aparticipant_id, "*-0 ", "*-01", 1)

and this:

gen tempx = subinstr(aparticipant_id, "*-0 ", "*-01", 1)
replace aparticipant_id = tempx if aparticipant_id != tempx

And neither seemed to work. Can someone kindly explain this to me like I'm a little kid? Crazymaking, lol.

Here's a listing of the variable. The first six records are the correct format, the remaining records are a subset of those missing the final "1"

aparticipant_id
SLE-KEN-GOU-001-01
SLE-KEN-GOU-001-02
SLE-KEN-GOU-002-01
SLE-KEN-GOU-002-02
SLE-KEN-GOU-002-03
SLE-KEN-GOU-002-04
SLE-KEN-HAN-001-0
SLE-KEN-HAN-002-0
SLE-KEN-HAN-003-0
SLE-KEN-HAN-004-0
SLE-KEN-HAN-005-0
SLE-KEN-HAN-006-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-001-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-002-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-003-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-004-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-005-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-006-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-007-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-008-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-009-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-010-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-011-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-012-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-013-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-014-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-015-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-016-0
SLE-KEN-KOI-017-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-001-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-002-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-003-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-004-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-005-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-006-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-007-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-008-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-009-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-010-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-011-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-012-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-013-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-014-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-015-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-016-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-017-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-018-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-019-0
SLE-KEN-KOL-020-0

[Joseph Coveney]

Try something like

replace aparticipant_id = aparticipant_id + "1" if strlen(aparticipant_id) == strlen("SLE-KEN-KOL-020-0")

[Matt Price]

By gosh, that worked.

But what is wrong with my subinstr code above? I swear what I wrote was what was supposed to happen with your code, Joseph.

Either way, thanks very much for helping me with this!

[Clyde Schechter]

The three code attempts you show in #1 all fail because -subinstr()- does not have the ability to interpret wildcards or regular expressions. The second and third arguments of -subinstr()- can only be interpreted as literal strings.

You probably could have done what you wanted using the -ustrregexra()- function, which works with regular expressions. But -subinstr()- simply takes strings literally.

[Matt Price]

The three code attempts you show in #1 all fail because -subinstr()- does not have the ability to interpret wildcards or regular expressions. The second and third arguments of -subinstr()- can only be interpreted as literal strings.

You probably could have done what you wanted using the -ustrregexra()- function, which works with regular expressions. But -subinstr()- simply takes strings literally.

Aha, I did not see that. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you Clyde!