topic Re: SAS Programming Help in SAS Programming

SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:05:09 GMT

I am trying to do these steps in this image but my code is not working very much.

Here's what I have

data medicine;
input patient date;


RETAIN date2 date9.;

datalines;
REC PATIENT DATE DATE2
1 1001 01FEB2009
2 1001 02FEB2009
3 1001 04FEB2009
4 1001 06FEB2009
5 1002 17FEB2009
6 1002 18FEB2009
7 1002 19FEB2009
8 1003 12FEB2009
9 1003 16FEB2009
10 1003 19FEB2009
;

I keep getting an error with my retain statement saying:

 172        data medicine;
 173        input patient date date2;
 174        
 175        
 176        RETAIN date2 date9.;
                         ______
                         22
                         201
 ERROR 22-322: Syntax error, expecting one of the following: a name, a quoted string, a numeric constant, a datetime constant, 
               a missing value, (, -, :, ;, _ALL_, _CHARACTER_, _CHAR_, _NUMERIC_.  
 
 ERROR 201-322: The option is not recognized and will be ignored.

Re: SAS Programming Help

novinosrin — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:06:32 GMT

HI @Curious4 I am curious to know why you are formatting the date2 variable in a RETAIN statement?

Re: SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:10:40 GMT

Because thats what the assignment asked me to do in the image I posted.

Re: SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:11:48 GMT

"We will create a variable date2 that we RETAIN, format this as dat9. (For printing)"

Re: SAS Programming Help

Reeza — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:20:26 GMT

Those are separate programming steps though. You need both a RETAIN and a FORMAT statement.

retain date2;
format date2 date9.;

Re: SAS Programming Help

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:23:06 GMT

Some homework assignments from Prof. Kurt:

determine if there is a format option available in a RETAIN statement
find a statement that lets you assign a FORMAT to a variable.
find the option of an INFILE statement that lets you skip a header line in the data
explain the reason for reading only two columns, when three are present in the data
see if you can find an informat that lets you read a date value as a SAS date value

😉

Finishing these tasks will advance you a lot towards a better understanding of what's happening here.

Re: SAS Programming Help

ballardw — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 19:47:14 GMT

Some additional Hints:

Do not place variable names in a DATALINES block.

The first value in your data row is Rec not PatientID (left to right on Input needs to match the data lines)

Re: SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 20:27:29 GMT

Thats how they did it in the image.

Re: SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 21:26:08 GMT

Wondering if my if statement looks right.

data medicine;
input patient date;

retain date2;
format date2 date9.;

if first.patient then date2 = date;
else if not first.patient then date=date2;
else date2=date;

Re: SAS Programming Help

Curious4 — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 21:38:15 GMT

done. i think