topic meaning in SAS Programming

meaning

thanikondharish — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 04:54:44 GMT

data s ;
set sashelp.class ;
t=min(age,_n_) ;
run;

what is meaning of t=min(age,_n_) ?

Re: meaning

Jagadishkatam — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 05:02:31 GMT

Here the function min is for minimum so it returns the minimum values of the variables and puts them in the new variable.

here _n_ returns the row number of the min(age,_n_) will compare the age with the row number or observation number and keeps the minimum of them in the new variable.

Re: meaning

Kurt_Bremser — Mon, 03 Sep 2018 06:43:47 GMT

To be very correct here: _n_ is not the row number as such. It is the number of the current iteration of the data step. This very often correlates with either the row number of the input or output dataset, but it can very easily be different:

data s;
do until (eof);
  set sashelp.class end=eof;
  t=min(age,_n_);
end;
run;