topic Re: UPDATE statement - Fill null values with previous non-null values within same group in SAS Programming

UPDATE statement - Fill null values with previous non-null values within same group

renanm — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 01:41:42 GMT

I've been looking for a way to fill null values with previous non-null values within the same group.

While I know how to do that in SQL it took me a while to figure out in SAS.

I have been able to figure out the code that will accomplish this. However, I'd like this to apply to only about 10 variables of about 100 variables I have in my data set.

is there a way to apply the update to only selected variables with the below code?

data Want;
   update MyData(obs=0) MyData;
   by ID;
   output;
run;
 
proc print data=Want;
run;

Thanks in advance !

Re: UPDATE statement - Fill null values with previous non-null values within same group

Tom — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 01:59:57 GMT

Just re-read those variables from the dataset.

Let's day you want to update only VAR1-VAR5 .

data Want;
   update MyData(obs=0) MyData ;
   by ID;
   set MyData (drop=Var1-Var5);
   output;
run;

Re: UPDATE statement - Fill null values with previous non-null values within same group

renanm — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 13:22:38 GMT

Hi @Tom , thanks for the reply.

In your suggestion below, wouldn't the output data only contain VAR1-VAR5?

Ultimately I need the output dataset to contain all 100 variables VAR1-VAR100 but only retro-fill VAR1-VAR5.

Thanks !

Re: UPDATE statement - Fill null values with previous non-null values within same group

Tom — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 14:16:34 GMT

@renanm wrote:

Hi @Tom , thanks for the reply.

In your suggestion below, wouldn't the output data only contain VAR1-VAR5?

Ultimately I need the output dataset to contain all 100 variables VAR1-VAR100 but only retro-fill VAR1-VAR5.

Thanks !

No. Try it.