topic Re: Creating new variable at specific position in SAS Programming

Creating new variable at specific position

nilu10686 — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 23:50:23 GMT

Hi All,

In an interview of SAS, I have asked this question that In my dataset if I have 1000 variables so I want to create new variable @ 5th place or 50th place what method I should choose?

Any help appreciated.

Re: Creating new variable at specific position

SASKiwi — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 02:50:35 GMT

This is one way:

data want;
  retain Var1 Var2 Var3 Var4 NewVar;
  set have;
  NewVar = "NewVal";
run;

But IMHO it's a dumb question as the position of a variable has no effect on processing or analysis. The only time I reposition variables is to regroup them for browsing in a viewer.

Re: Creating new variable at specific position

ChrisNZ — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 05:30:29 GMT

For 50th place, I'd use

data WANT;
  if 0 then set HAVE (keep=VAR1--VAR49);
  length NEWVAR 8;
  if 0 then set HAVE (keep=VAR50--VAR99);
  .. normal SAS code ...
run;

but as @SASKiwi said that's not an interesting question.

Re: Creating new variable at specific position

Ksharp — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 12:19:10 GMT

Same as ChrisNZ:

data have;
retain var1-var1000 1;
run;

data want;
if 0 then set have(keep=var1-var50);
length new_var $ 200 ;
set have;
new_var='NewVariable';
run;

Re: Creating new variable at specific position

PaigeMiller — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 12:38:44 GMT

@SASKiwi wrote:

But IMHO it's a dumb question as the position of a variable has no effect on processing or analysis. The only time I reposition variables is to regroup them for browsing in a viewer.

I give extra points for this answer, if I'm asking the question in an interview.