title: How to check whether the first character of a string is a small letter using sas
body: <p>I have a variable <code>NAME</code>. I want to check whether the first character of this variable is a small letter or not.  <code>Name</code> looks like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>aBMS
  BMS
  xMS
  zVewS
  fPP
  NBMS
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I extract the first character of my variable using <code>first_letter = first(NAME);</code> Can anyone teach me how to check whether the variable <code>first_letter</code> is a small letter or not. Now I did it as follows, but I am wondering if I can achieve this without typing the whole alphabet letters.  <code>if first_letter = 'a' | first_letter = 'b' |first_letter = 'c' ... then dummy = 1</code>.</p>