topic Coalesece in SAS Programming

Coalesece

GS2 — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:42:43 GMT

Using SAS 9.4

I am running the following code:

data want;
input a $ b $ c $;
datalines;
one two three
one two three
one two three
;
run;

data check2(drop=i);
set want;
length mme $ 500;
array tots _character_;
do i = 1 to dim(tots);
if tots[i] ne '' then do;
mme = catx(',', mme, coalescec(tots[i]));
end;
end;
run;

I have 3 character variables that I am trying to combine all possible combinations and separate with a ",". However, when I run this code it repeats the combination twice. Is there a way to get the data to not repeat the second time? Thank you

Re: Coalesece

mkeintz — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:50:54 GMT

Put the

length mme $ 500;

statement AFTER the
array tots _character_;

statement

Otherwise the array includes MME, explaining your unexpected results.

The compiler interprets _character_ and _numeric_ (and _all_) based on the variables it knows about at the point in the code that they appear.

Re: Coalesece

PGStats — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 20:04:14 GMT

The problem is that when you say

array tots _character_;

variable mme is already defined and thus is included in the list of _character_ variables referenced by array tots. So the simple solution is to define the array sooner:

data check2(drop=i);
set want;
array tots _character_;
length mme $ 500;
do i = 1 to dim(tots);
    if tots[i] ne '' then do;
        mme = catx(',', mme, coalescec(tots[i]));
        end;
    end;
run;

Note that you could also do:

data check3(drop=i);
set want;
array tots _character_;
length mme $ 500;
mme = catx(",", of tots[*]);
run;