Which function can be used to remove unwanted characters from a string?

The function that is used to remove unwanted characters from a string is the COMPRESS function. This function effectively eliminates specified characters or all blanks from a character string, making it particularly useful for cleaning data.

When utilizing COMPRESS, you can specify which characters to remove; if no characters are specified, it will default to removing all spaces. This functionality is beneficial for scenarios such as stripping out extraneous punctuation, whitespace, or other unwanted characters from strings, facilitating cleaner datasets for analysis.

In contrast, other functions listed serve different purposes: the TRANWRD function is used for replacing specific words or phrases within a string, while the FIND function locates the position of a substring within a string but does not modify the string itself. The MDY function is designed for creating date values from separate month, day, and year variables rather than processing strings.