topic Re: Is there a SAS style guide in SAS Programming

Is there a SAS style guide

GFW — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 12:45:03 GMT

I have searched the community, and find no related post.

So far, I can not find a complete style guide for SAS.

Hope someone can provide such information, or any good coding standard.

Thanks!

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

tomrvincent — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 13:32:12 GMT

google 'SAS style guide' and you'll find plenty.

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

Reeza — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 14:53:17 GMT

Pick one.

https://lexjansen.com/search/searchresults.php?q=style%20guide

Keep an eye on dates on the papers, SAS is from the 1970's so there's a lot of old stuff laying around the internet.

@GFW wrote:

I have searched the community, and find no related post.

So far, I can not find a complete style guide for SAS.

Hope someone can provide such information, or any good coding standard.

Thanks!

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

tomrvincent — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 18:42:27 GMT

Out of curiosity, what 'community' did you search?

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

Cynthia_sas — Thu, 08 Aug 2019 19:34:08 GMT

Hi:

There's no Strunk and White or Chicago Style manual, if that's what you mean. There are a lot of papers on good coding practices. In Programming 1, we have some basic recommendations for program style:

1) start each statement on a new line

2) indent lines and use white space to aid readability.

3) use comments

As an example, which program would you rather work with?

proc print data=sashelp.class;title 'my title'; var sex age name height weight; run;

 
proc print data=sashelp.class;
title 'my title';
var sex age name height weight;
run;

 
** This is my first report;
proc print data=sashelp.class;
   title 'my title';
   var sex age name height weight;
run;

They are all the same program, I'd rather work with 3 or 2. Program 1 would make me crazy. But SAS doesn't care about readability, so it doesn't care.

Cynthia

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

GFW — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 12:49:22 GMT

I mean this forum 🙂

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

GFW — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 12:52:18 GMT

Hi Cynthia,

Thanks for your suggestion, I prefer the third one and have been working with this style .

Re: Is there a SAS style guide

whs278 — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 14:18:13 GMT

Agree that 1 is terrible. Prefer 3 to 2. Like to indent code within each data/proc step.

I wish there was a more consistent SAS programming style . I see so many variations. Some languages like Python, and to a lesser extent R, have very strict style guidelines.