Introduction to Regular Expressions in SAS

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Purpose of This Book

1.2 Layout of This Book

1.3 Defining Regular Expressions

1.4 Motivational Examples

1.4.1 Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL)

1.4.2 Data Manipulation

1.4.3 Data Enrichment

1.1 Purpose of This Book

This book is meant for SAS programmers of virtually all skill levels. However, it is expected that you have at least a basic knowledge of the SAS language, including the DATA step, and how to use SAS PROCs.

This book provides all the tools you need to learn how to harness the power of regular expressions within the SAS programming language. The information provided lays the foundation for fairly advanced applications, which are discussed briefly as motivating examples later in this chapter. They are not ...