Using Compress and Put/Input functions in SAS - sas

Question

I have these two datasets here:
data ONE;
input ID LastName $ FirstInit $ 1.;
datalines;
509182793 Smith C
319861601 Williams J
345121778 Connor F
480863211 King L
907636280 Franklin D
729082859 Monroe T
835688938 Hall K
;
run;
data TWO;
input ID $ 11. State $ 2.;
datalines;
334-99-5246 TX
480-86-3211 MD
449-55-9407 VA
345-12-1778 GA
907-63-6280 NY
790-09-9813 WY
319-86-1601 FL
;
run;
I have two questions:
1) How would you use COMPRESS to create a new character variable, "ncv" and set the value of ncv to be the value of the character variable ID with the hyphens removed? Here's my attempt:
data TWO_NUMERIC;
set TWO;
ncv=COMPRESS(TWO, "+-", "d");
run;
2) How would you use PUT/INPUT to convert ncv to a numerical value to create a numeric variable, "newncv"
data TWO_NUMERIC;
set TWO;
put(TWO,z6.);
run;
To start off with these two questions, I start off with the DATA step and SET statements:
data TWO_NUMERIC;
set TWO;
run;
I looked SAS 9.2's help page but the use of these two statements in their example code seems to confuse me.

Answer 1

Ok, I was going to say RTM, but in this case it's not clear, at least not in my opinion.
Your mistake for compress is that the first parameter should be the variable, in this case ID, not the dataset TWO. In addition you only need to specify the - in your list, not +, unless you think there might be + in the variable as well. Adding the modifier D, specifies add digits to the remove list, which is the opposite of what you want.
Similar concept with PUT/INPUT, reference the variable and make sure you're using the correct function, in this case, input to convert it to numeric.
Data two_numeric;
set two;
ncv=COMPRESS(ID, "-");
ncv_num=input(ncv, 12.);
run;

Answer 2

Compress can be used in multiple ways, one way is described by #Reeza above and the other is using the "k" modifier, which means "keep" as shown below,
data TWO_NUMERIC;
set TWO;
ncv_d=COMPRESS(ID," ", "kd"); * kd means keep-digits, your code had TWO which is a dataset name;
ncv_n=COMPRESS(ID," ", "kn"); * kd means keep-numbers;
/* Input Function is used to convert CHAR to NUM *
* the best. format applies the nearest matching format */
newncv=input(ncv_d,best.);
run;
The link I found useful to explain the K modifier is http://www.amadeus.co.uk/sas-training/tips/1/1/11/the-enhanced-compress-function.php