topic Re: Select specific columns ending with same word in SAS Programming

Select specific columns ending with same word

karine — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:00:31 GMT

Hi,

From a table with many columns, how to select only the columns ending with the same word?

Thanks

Re: Select specific columns ending with same word

novinosrin — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:15:44 GMT

ending with the same word or letter?

if word, the var name should be delimited with something like (_) I would think

Re: Select specific columns ending with same word

karine — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:19:22 GMT

Hi
Some columns end with _b and others with _e. I want to keep those ending with _e.
Thanks

Re: Select specific columns ending with same word

novinosrin — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 21:28:11 GMT

data have;
t_1e=.;
t_2e=.;
t_3e=.;
t_1b=.;
t_2b=.;
run;



proc sql;
select name into : var separated by ' '
from dictionary.columns
where libname='WORK' and memname='HAVE'
and  char(upcase(name),length(name))='E';
quit;

%put &var;

data want;
set have(keep=&var);
run;

Re: Select specific columns ending with same word

ballardw — Mon, 06 Aug 2018 22:56:10 GMT

@karine wrote:

Hi,

From a table with many columns, how to select only the columns ending with the same word?

Thanks

Use this as a learning point for naming variables. If you know that you might have some requirement like this it would be better to originally name them as e_something. Then the task of using those names becomes three characters: e_: which would use all the variables that start with e_ .

Another consideration could be "what is the rest of the text of the name". If you have variables like House_e and House_b , Car_e and Car_b, a bunch of paired names. Perhaps your data would work better in a transposed form where you have a variable that takes on values of House and Car then two variable _e and _b.

Re: Select specific columns ending with same word

karine — Wed, 08 Aug 2018 02:10:58 GMT

Thank you!