COLLATE

COLLATE

Generates a collating sequence character string

Windows specifics: Uses the ASCII code sequence

Syntax
Details
See Also

Syntax

COLLATE (start-position<,end-position>)

COLLATE(start-position<,,length>)

start-position: specifies the numeric position in the collating sequence of the first character to be returned.
end-position: specifies the numeric position in the collating sequence of the last character to be returned.
length: specifies the number of characters you want (the length of the returned string).

Details

The COLLATE function returns a string of ASCII characters that range in value from 0 to 32,767. The string returned by the COLLATE function begins with the ASCII character specified by the start-position argument. If the end-position argument is specified, the string returned by the COLLATE function contains all the ASCII characters between the start-position and end-position arguments. If the length argument is specified instead of the end-position argument, then the COLLATE function returns a string with a length of length. The returned string ends, or truncates, with the character having the value 255 if you request a string length that contains characters exceeding this value.

If you assign the return value of the COLLATE function to a variable with a length less than 256, the ASCII collating sequence string is padded with blanks to a length of 256. If you request a length of more than 256 characters, the returned string is padded to a length of length.

Note: Any programs using the COLLATE function with characters above ASCII 127 (the hexadecimal notation is '7F'x) may return a different value when used on a PC from another country as characters above ASCII 127 are national characters and they vary from country to country. [cautionend]

See Also

COLLATE function in SAS Language Reference: Dictionary

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