topic Re: Multiple variables in a comparison operator in SAS Programming

Multiple variables in a comparison operator

gekco — Thu, 30 May 2019 19:52:39 GMT

I would like to subset my dataset to include only records where one or more of a set of variable meet a certain value.

My code looks like:

data work.test2

data work.test

if VAR1 | VAR 2 | VAR3 ... | VAR 30 = 'VALUE';

run;

How do I condense that to either VAR1-VAR30 = ' VALUE' or VARn = 'VALUE'? Using (keep=VAR1-VAR30) does not seem applicable in this case.

Thank you

Re: Multiple variables in a comparison operator

Tom — Thu, 30 May 2019 20:11:07 GMT

Your posted code might be valid syntax, but it does not do what you claim to want.

There is special syntax for using IN with an array that could help.

data work.test2 ;
  set data work.test;
  array vars var1-var30;
  if 'VALUE' in vars ;
run;

Or you could use the WHICHC() function. That will actually return which variable number was the first one found to have the value. You don't need an ARRAY for that. A value of 0 (which SAS will treat as FALSE when evaluating as boolean) will indicate that is was not found.

data work.test2 ;
  set data work.test;
  if whichc('VALUE',of var1-var30);
run;

Re: Multiple variables in a comparison operator

gekco — Fri, 31 May 2019 19:06:23 GMT

Thanks! WHICHC() works perfectly for this.