topic Asterisk in Arrays in SAS Programming

Asterisk in Arrays

ManitobaMoose — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 01:46:02 GMT

Hi,

I am familiar with the asterisk being used in arrays when the number of arrays is not known. This is shown in the top part of the code below. However, it appears the asterisk can also be used with assignment statements, as below, in the Qtr1 assignment statement. Can someone describe how SAS uses the asteriski in the Qtr1 = Sum(of Month{*}) statement, and how sas knows how to distinguish this from the use as determining the correct number of arrays? Thanks.

Data TestPrep.SalesArray4 ; 
	Set TestPrep.Sales ;
	Array Month{*} JanSales FebSales  MarchAmt ; 
	Qtr1 = Sum(of Month{*}) ; 
run ;

Re: Asterisk in Arrays

Tom — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 03:39:44 GMT

The OF keyword allows you to use a variable list in a function call. ARRAY_NAME(*) is an example of a variable list.

Other examples are things like

var1-var20
first -- last
prefix:
_all_
_numeric_
_character_
first-character-last
first-numeric-last

Re: Asterisk in Arrays

Reeza — Sat, 07 Jul 2018 02:22:11 GMT

This post may be helpful:

https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2018/05/29/6-easy-ways-to-specify-a-list-of-variables-in-sas.html