String variables (COMPUTE command)

• String variables can be modified but not created on COMPUTE. However, a new string variable can be created and assigned a width with the STRING command and then assigned new values with COMPUTE.
• Existing string variables transformed with COMPUTE retain their original dictionary formats. String variables declared on STRING and transformed with COMPUTE retain the formats assigned to them on STRING.
• The format of string variables cannot be changed with FORMATS. Instead, use STRING to create a new variable with the desired width and then use COMPUTE to set the values of the new string equal to the values of the original.
• The string returned by a string expression does not have to be the same width as the target variable. If the target variable is shorter, the result is right-trimmed. If the target variable is longer, the result is right-padded. The program displays no warning messages when trimming or padding.
• To control the width of strings, use the functions that are available for padding (LPAD, RPAD), trimming (LTRIM, RTRIM), and selecting a portion of strings (SUBSTR).
• To determine whether a character in a string is single-byte or double-byte, use the MBLEN.BYTE function. Specify the string and, optionally, its beginning byte position. If the position is not specified, it defaults to 1.

See the topic String functions for more information.