Support : Publications : Chronolog Archives : Jan/Feb 2003

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Using RANK

It's possible to rank on initial characters in a field, up to a specified length. To illustrate, take, for example, the wide variation a law firm's name can have due to changes over time in the firm's partnership. With respect to the law firm of Townsend and Townsend and Crew, the name has changes from the original name "Townsend and Townsend" to "Townsend and Townsend Khourie and Crew" to "Townsend and Townsend and Crew." In addition, the name can have "&" in place of "and," as well as LLP sometimes at the end. Any variation, even the presence of a comma, will cause an otherwise identical name to RANK separately. To avoid such variation, try the RANK command on just the first 5-10 characters of the field. In this manner RANK will pull all the names together because it is only looking at the beginning of each field. The syntax is ?RANK (LR 1-N) (e.g., RANK LR 1-8 to RANK the first eight characters).

Ric Snead
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA