Question

The following SAS program is submitted: data combine; country = 'Italy, Russia, Ireland'; found = find(country, 'i'); run; What is the value of the variable FOUND in the output data set?

a) 0
b) 1
c) 3
d) It depends on the implementation of the FIND function.

Answer 1

The value of the variable FOUND in the provided SAS program will be 1, as the FIND function returns the position of the first occurrence of the specified substring, which is case-sensitive and found at the beginning of 'Italy'.

Step-by-step explanation:

The SAS program provided contains the FIND function which is used to search for a substring within a larger string variable. In this case, the FIND function is searching for the substring 'i' within the string 'Italy, Russia, Ireland'. The FIND function is case-sensitive by default, so it will look for a lowercase 'i'.

Since 'Italy' has a lowercase 'i' as the first character, the FIND function will return the position of the first occurrence of 'i' in the string. Therefore, the value of the variable FOUND in the output data set will be 1, because the first 'i' is in the first position of the string 'Italy, Russia, Ireland'. This makes option b) the correct answer.