topic Re: Turn a list of value into file in SAS Programming

Turn a list of value into file

hhchenfx — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 04:56:19 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I have a list of value in the following format/statement:

%LET list= a b c d e f g h e;

a b c d e f g h e;

I would like to use this list to create a dataset with a column containing these value.

So the data should look like

var

...

Can you please help me with that?

Thank you,

HHC

Re: Turn a list of value into file

Phil_NZ — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 05:17:29 GMT

I think you may need PROC TRANSPOSE ?

Re: Turn a list of value into file

Tom — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:01:12 GMT

So you have a macro variable with a space delimited list of words and you want to convert it into a dataset? So it this example the macro variable is name LIST.

%LET list= a b c d e f g h e;

You haven't said what dataset you want to create or what name you want to use for the variable to hold the words.

So let's make a dataset named WANT and use WORD as the name of the variable.

You also did not say the maximum number of characters that any word could contain. Let's just assume that is 8.

So a simple DO loop should do the trick.

data want ;
  length word $8 ;
  do index=1 to countw("&list",' ');
    word = scan("&list",index,' ');
    output;
  end;
run;

Re: Turn a list of value into file

andreas_lds — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 06:51:42 GMT

I would like to go some steps backwards: why do have a list of values in a macro-variable? Is this a homework-task or a real-life problem? If it is the later, than it is most likely possible to create the required dataset without the detour using a macro-variable.

Re: Turn a list of value into file

hhchenfx — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 17:23:02 GMT

Hi Tom,

Thank you again for helping me out.

It works perfectly.

HHC

Re: Turn a list of value into file

Tom — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 18:06:31 GMT

Note that if the list is comma separated you can use it directly in the DO statement without the need for INDEX or SCAN().

So for numeric values:

%let list=1,2,3,4,5;
data want;
  do value=&list;
    output;
  end;
run;

And for character variable include the quotes in the macro variable LIST. Note it is best to define the length of the variable first otherwise SAS will guess a length based on the first value in the list.

%let list='a',"b",'c' ;
data want;
  length value $8;
  do value=&list;
    output;
  end;
run;