Which function is used to concatenate values with a delimiter in SAS?

The function that is used to concatenate values with a specified delimiter in SAS is CATX. This function allows you to join multiple string values into one string, while also placing a designated delimiter between each of the concatenated values. For example, if you have several variables that contain parts of an address, you can use CATX to combine them into a single string with commas or spaces in between.

The versatility of CATX lies in its ability to handle missing values as well; it will automatically skip over any missing values while concatenating. This results in a cleaner output without extra delimiters where there were missing values.

Other concatenation functions like CAT, CATS, and CATQ do not include this delimiter functionality. CAT simply concatenates strings together. CATS trims leading and trailing spaces before concatenation but still doesn’t include a delimiter. CATQ adds quotes to the concatenated strings but, like CAT, does not use a delimiter for separation. Thus, CATX is uniquely suited for situations requiring both concatenation and delimiter inclusion.