String identification

In this section, we will explore the Scan, Index, and Find functions that help us with string identification.

The Scan function

Unless you can successfully identify a part of the string successfully, replacement or modification of the string value is impossible. In the following code block, we will review some functions that help in string identification:

Data Cities;
Input City $50.;
First=Scan(City, +1);
Last=Scan(City,-1);
Third=Scan(City,4);
Datalines;
Chicago Paris London Geneva Dublin
;

The following output shows the words identified from the given string:

The First and the Last words in the string are identified using the positive and negative count. The positive count looks for the first instance of...