INFO: Transposing First Character w/ Last Character in a Field

MORE INFORMATION

The following code demonstrates an easy way to do this:

* Replaces the field for each record
 REPLACE <fieldname> WITH RIGHT(TRIM(<fieldname>),1)+; 
     SUBSTR(<fieldname>,2,LEN(TRIM(<fieldname>))-2)+LEFT(<fieldname>,1) ; 
     FOR LEN(TRIM(<fieldname>))>1
				

Before the commands are executed, a sample table may look similar to the following:

   <FIELDNAME>
   -----------
   A-0000-Z
   B-0-Y
   C-000000-X
   D-00000-W
				

After the commands are executed, the table looks as follows:

   <FIELDNAME>
   -----------
   Z-0000-A
   Y-0-B
   X-000000-C
   W-00000-D
				

The REPLACE command concatenates the original rightmost character with the a substring of the original value, which omitts the first and last characters, and appends the original leftmost character to that string.

This command works with variable-length character fields. With a few modifications, this code can be quite flexible and useful for string- manipulation purposes and can be adapted to work with other types of fields.