What does the CAT function do in comparison to CATX?

The CAT function is designed for concatenating strings together, but it does not modify the strings in any way. This means that it concatenates the values exactly as they are provided, preserving any leading or trailing spaces that may exist. Consequently, if any strings involved in the concatenation have extra spaces at the beginning or the end, those spaces will be maintained in the result.

In contrast, the CATX function is designed to concatenate strings while also allowing for the removal of leading and trailing spaces. It does this in addition to inserting a specified delimiter between each of the concatenated strings. Thus, when using CATX, any leading or trailing blanks from the individual strings are eliminated, leading to a cleaner final result.

The understanding of these two functions is essential for string manipulation tasks in SAS, particularly when formatting outputs or preparing data for reporting, where unnecessary spaces can interfere with analysis or presentation.