topic Re: drop variables with same prefix in SAS Programming

drop variables with same prefix

aarony — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:56:03 GMT

hi i have 800+variables. some of the variables have CGOV as a common prefix. i wanted to drop all of them. how may i do this?

Many thx,

aaron

Re: drop variables with same prefix

naveen_srini — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 17:59:13 GMT

Try:

drop CGOV: ;

Re: drop variables with same prefix

aarony — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:01:00 GMT

not working...get an error:

WARNING: The variable EC in the DROP, KEEP, or RENAME list has never been referenced.

Re: drop variables with same prefix

art297 — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:04:22 GMT

EC? Naveen suggested that you use drop CGOV: ;

Show your code.

Re: drop variables with same prefix

naveen_srini — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:04:52 GMT

Can you please show your code that you used?

Re: drop variables with same prefix

aarony — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:08:01 GMT

oh. sorry. it works with the colon! this is very very helpful. thank you so much.

do u by any chance have an idea, how to drop the same suffixes? ie: _C.

i have variables that ends with _C: for example, xxx_C. how may i drop them?

thankyou!

Re: drop variables with same prefix

aarony — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:10:24 GMT

just along the lines, how may i rename those variables that ends with _C to without them?

ideally i would like, aaa_c->aaa

many thanks in advance!

Re: drop variables with same prefix

naveen_srini — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:22:31 GMT

If all variables are in an order, you can prolly use

drop yourfirstvariable_C --yourlastvariable_C ;

Re: drop variables with same prefix

Tom — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:28:57 GMT

Rename is similar to suffix. You need to query the list of names.

proc contents data=have out=contents(keep=name) noprint ; run;

proc sql noprint ;

select catx('=',name,substr(name,1,length(name)-2))

into :renames separated by ' '

from contents

where upcase(name) like '%^_C' escape '^'

;

quit;

data want ;

set have (rename=(&renames));

run;