Table cell indicating which column's value to use in equation

PHK — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 05:22:10 GMT

Hi,

I am looking for a straightforward / easy way to do the following:

Say I have the table:

data INPUT_DATASET;

input a $1. b c;

datalines;

b 10 20

c 30 40

b 50 60

c 70 80

;

run;

The first variable (i.e. a) is the name of the column/variables of which I want to use the value in an equation. Say my equation is 10*X, where X is either the value of b or c, depending on what column a says it should be. (I don't want to use IF statements, for I work from the assumption that I don't know the variables that column a can refer to. I need it more dynamic than that.)

What I have tried, which obviously did not work but would illustrate what I want, is the following:

data TEST_OUTPUT;

set INPUT_DATASET;

call execute('%let current_var = ' || a );

TEST=10*&current_var;

run;

The warning is:

WARNING: Apparent symbolic reference CURRENT_VAR not resolved

So, my question is: is there an easy straightforward way to do what I want to do, or should I work around it (such as first determining the unknown variables (b and c in this case) and then using a macro with a loop over the determined list of variables)?

Thanks,

Pieter

Re: Table cell indicating which column's value to use in equation

PHK — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:42:31 GMT

A colleague of mine suggested using the VNAME function, so I do have a solution now:

data TEST;

set INPUT_DATASET;

array numeric_vars{*} _NUMERIC_;

do i = 1 to dim(numeric_vars);

if vname(numeric_vars{i}) = a then do;

TEMP_VALUE = numeric_vars{i};

leave;

end;

TEST = TEMP_VALUE*10;

drop i TEMP_VALUE;

run;

Is there perhaps an even more straight forward way than looping through the variables?

topic Table cell indicating which column's value to use in equation in SAS Programming

Table cell indicating which column's value to use in equation

Re: Table cell indicating which column's value to use in equation