topic Re: How to merge two varlists in SAS Data Management

How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 13:02:29 GMT

How to merge Alist and Blist to have Clist containing all variables in two mentioned lists?

%let Alist = x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 ;

%let Blist = x4 x5 x6 ;

Re: How to merge two varlists

Reeza — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 13:36:40 GMT

%let clist = &alist. &blist.;

Re: How to merge two varlists

FreelanceReinh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 14:20:23 GMT

I guess you wrote "merge" and not "concatenate" because you would like your "Clist" to be free of duplicates.

I'm not aware of an easy solution to this task, but a quick search on the web brought up this discussion:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/33640976/how-do-i-deduplicate-words-in-a-character-variable

The solution provided by user "Chris J" promises to deduplicate the concatenated list suggested by @Reeza, but I haven't tested it.

However, it depends on how you are going to use Clist, whether you really need to have it duplicate free. In DROP or KEEP statements (or dataset options), for example, duplicate variable names do no harm.

Re: How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 14:46:46 GMT

Thanks Reeza for your reply.Let me clarify myself. I want to avoid duplicated variables as well.

Re: How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 14:49:20 GMT

many thanks for your reply but i need to avoid duplicated variables in new varlist.

Re: How to merge two varlists

data_null__ — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 15:40:38 GMT

Do you need to maintain any particular order of the variable names in the list? Do the variables mentioned in the lists exist, or need to exist, or are they just arbitrary SAS-names?

Re: How to merge two varlists

Astounding — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 15:52:59 GMT

A few more considerations ...

Does capitalization matter? If one list contains "name" and the other contains "Name", are those duplicates?

Could duplicates exist within just one of the lists? For example, is it possible that &alist = name height name?

I know I have seen this problem addressed in a SAS Press book. Macro Language Magic has a chapter on generating text. But I would hesitate to just copy a section of copyrighted material here.

Good luck.

Re: How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 15:56:19 GMT

Hi -

- order does not matter, although preferable

- yes variables in the list exist.

thx

Re: How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 15:57:25 GMT

Hi - thanks for your reply.

- Capitalization does not matter.

- duplication in one list is not possible.

Thanks

Re: How to merge two varlists

Astounding — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 16:10:43 GMT

Here's an approach ... you would need to apply it to both ALIST and BLIST. You would clearly need to encapsulate this inside a macro definition as well since it uses %DO and %IF.

%let clist=%upcase(&alist);

%do i=1 %to %sysfunc(countw(&blist));

%let onevar = %upcase(%scan(&blist, &i));

%if %index(%str( &clist ), %str( &onevar ))=0 %then %let clist = &clist &onevar;

%end;

Re: How to merge two varlists

Moh — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 16:25:39 GMT

Astounding , Thanks soooooo much!!!!! It works very well .....