topic Re: no observations are copied when I use data keep in SAS Data Management

no observations are copied when I use data keep

Curly — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 18:49:48 GMT

Hi,

I am trying to take my data called registry and only keep 2 variables in a new data set called simple_reg.

data Est1.simple_reg (keep = record_num test_history_complete); *take the registry file and reduce the variables;
set Est1.registry;
run;

Est1.registry has 550 observations and 1700 variables

after I do this Est1.simple_reg has 0 observations and 2 variables ( the two that I keep)

What am i missing.

This new file called Est1.simple_reg shouls have 550 observations because everyone has a record number

I have also tried...

data Est1.simple_reg ();                                   *take the registry file and reduce the variables;
   set Est1.registry;
   keep mrn medical_history_complete;
run;

Re: no observations are copied when I use data keep

Astounding — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 19:43:04 GMT

My best guess: You experimented with many variations of the program, trying to get it to work. In one of those variations, running the program wiped out all the data within Est1.registry. Try printing the first 10 observations, and make sure the data is still there. I'm betting that it's not.

Re: no observations are copied when I use data keep

Curly — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 20:00:38 GMT

Thank you so much for helping.

I'm pretty new to Sas and I found out that when I was doing the keep statment I was running into erros because many of the other variables did not have a format and hence it wasn't reading.

I did this...

data Est1.simple_reg;
set Est1.registry ( keep = mrn history_complete);
run;

and because I was telling sas which variables to keep before sas wrote them I was able to get around that.

Again thank you for helping!!