topic Renaming in data step not working in New SAS User

Renaming in data step not working

MerAgSo — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 21:55:24 GMT

Hello everybody

I have existing dataset covid which has space in variables name like below:

numero expediente del paciente

I tried renaming them assuming SAS would turn spaces into underscores but when I run the program it sends a warning that the variable does not exist in the dataset. I have run PROC CONTENTS and the variables are there, but the variable name appears without underscores. The original data came from an excel file but I changed it into SAS data.

Here's the code:

libname COVIDBD '/home/mercedesaguilars0/sasuser.v94/SASMer';

data base;
set covidbd.covid;
run;

NOTE: There were 398 observations read from the data set COVIDBD.COVID.

NOTE: The data set WORK.BASE has 398 observations and 199 variables.

data base2;
set base
(rename=(numero_expediente_del_paciente=numexp));

run;

Variable numero_expediente_del_paciente is not on file WORK.BASE2

Thank you

Re: Renaming in data step not working

mkeintz — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 22:17:17 GMT

You need to use what SAS calls a "name literal".

Just as

A number, say like 5, is a numeric literal (as in X=5).
A quoted string is a character literal (as in Y='This is a string')
A '.....'d is a date literal (renew_date='25Aug2021'd)
'....'t is a time literal (lunch_time='13:00:00't)
'...'dt is a datetime literal

There are some others too (hexadecimal literals come to mind).

But you need to use a name literal, expressed as 'this is a variable name'n. So in your example, you probably should use

set base
(rename=('numero expediente del paciente'n=numexp));

SAS does NOT replace blanks in a name with underscores.

Re: Renaming in data step not working

SASKiwi — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 22:20:29 GMT

If your variable names contain spaces then you will probably need to do something like this:

data base2;
set base
(rename=('numero expediente del paciente'n = numexp)); 
run;

Re: Renaming in data step not working

Reeza — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 22:31:27 GMT

Set this option and reimport your data to avoid the issue entirely.

options validvarname = v7;

If you have this option set, when you import data SAS will automatically add the underscores to the variable names as necessary.

@MerAgSo wrote:

Hello everybody

I have existing dataset covid which has space in variables name like below:

numero expediente del paciente

I tried renaming them assuming SAS would turn spaces into underscores but when I run the program it sends a warning that the variable does not exist in the dataset. I have run PROC CONTENTS and the variables are there, but the variable name appears without underscores. The original data came from an excel file but I changed it into SAS data.

Here's the code:

libname COVIDBD '/home/mercedesaguilars0/sasuser.v94/SASMer';

data base;
set covidbd.covid;
run;

NOTE: There were 398 observations read from the data set COVIDBD.COVID.

NOTE: The data set WORK.BASE has 398 observations and 199 variables.

data base2;
set base
(rename=(numero_expediente_del_paciente=numexp));

run;

Variable numero_expediente_del_paciente is not on file WORK.BASE2

Thank you