topic Re: UPDATE in SAS Programming

UPDATE

jcis7 — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:15:06 GMT

I've a field in a dataset, table a, I want to update; it has 9000 observations.

Table b has the new information; it has 9000 observations.

I used the update statement but am getting a table with 18,0000 observations.

Table A

scode field2 field3 field4

2 23 34543 233409

3 24 34569 800380

5 45 098873

8 33 093872

Table B

scode field3

5 39849

8 30987

DESIRED OUTPUT Table

scode field2 field3 field4

2 23 34543 233409

3 24 34569 800380

5 45 39849 098873

8 33 30987 093872

What am I doing wrong?

Here's my code:

data updated;

set sorted distorig;

by scode;

run;

Any help you can give is much appreciated!

Re: UPDATE

Reeza — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 02:36:27 GMT

You didn't use an update statement your code has a set statement.

See this link on how to update a dataset:

Step-by-Step Programming with Base SAS(R) Software

Re: UPDATE

RichardinOz — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 02:53:35 GMT

Cut to the chase

data updated;

update sorted distorig;

by scode;

run;

You can also update the original data in place

data sorted;

update sorted distorig;

by scode;

run;

but there is a risk that if for any reason the update fails you have a partially overwritten data set (SAS does not have rollback) so the first version is conservative.

Richard

Re: UPDATE

Tom — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 13:28:01 GMT

You probably want to MERGE the datasets. If you use MERGE then the values from the last dataset "win", even if the value is missing. The UPDATE statement is really for when you have a dataset with transactions (changes) for specific variables. If you use the UPDATE statement then missing values will not overwrite (update) existing values in the "master" dataset.

Re: UPDATE

jcis7 — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 16:01:11 GMT

Thank you Everyone!