topic Re: Replacing the variable names in SAS Programming

Replacing the variable names

AbuChowdhury — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 01:00:58 GMT

Hi Experts,

The sample of my original dataset looks as follows:

Date ar1 ar2 ar3 ar4 ar5

.	.	.	.	.	.
.	-0.015726804	0.0176842945	-0.016964348	-0.00088675	0.0160770942
01/01/2004	0	0	0	0	0
02/01/2004	-0.00752637	-0.014333754	0.0208526907	-0.077040716	0.2230172601
05/01/2004	-0.072398762	-0.064743906	-0.026989673	-0.127645586	0.0311527312
06/01/2004	0.0056040872	0.1373077807	0.0122890855	0.0957376211	-0.025696325
07/01/2004	0.0310395172	0.036282484	-0.00868609	0.0554872928	-0.075945777
08/01/2004	-0.021351471	0.0808676035	-0.032316476	0.0035982172	-0.042734186

However, I want to change the variable names. The new variables names will be

CA45245E1097

CH0018666781

US00208J1088

US0025671050

US0038301067

instead of ar1 ar2 ar3 ar4 ar5) and so on. Observations will remain same. Only variable names will have to be changed. How can I do that?

Re: Replacing the variable names

Reeza — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 01:22:11 GMT

Since there's no discernable pattern you'll need to manually use rename statements.

Rename ar1=CA35543 ar2=CH5783 etc;

Re: Replacing the variable names

AbuChowdhury — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 01:31:09 GMT

Can't we use macro for this? I see from the following link.

SAS Code Fragments: A few SAS macro programs for renaming variables dynamically

But in scenario number 1, it changed the names of only two variables. How can do that for all of my variables?

Re: Replacing the variable names

AbuChowdhury — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 01:56:12 GMT

I think that this code is helpful:

%macro rename1(oldvarlist, newvarlist);

%let k=1;

%let old = %scan(&oldvarlist, &k);

%let new = %scan(&newvarlist, &k);

%do %while(("&old" NE "") & ("&new" NE ""));

rename &old = &new;

%let k = %eval(&k + 1);

%let old = %scan(&oldvarlist, &k);

%let new = %scan(&newvarlist, &k);

%end;

%mend;

data want ;

set have;

%rename1(ar1 ar2 ar3 ar4 ar5, CA45245E1097 CH0018666781 US00208J1088 US0025671050 US0038301067);

run;

But if I have ar1, ar2, ......., ar200, then what can I do? I tried with the following but it's not working.

%let oldvarlist= ar1-ar5;

%let newvarlist= CA45245E1097 CH0018666781 US00208J1088 US0025671050 US0038301067;

data want ;

set have;

%rename1(&oldvarlist, &newvarlist);

run;

Re: Replacing the variable names

Reeza — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 02:25:50 GMT

I must have missed the part where you said you have 200 variables.

Do you have the name mappings somewhere?

See several options here:

sas - Create a sequence of new column names - Stack Overflow

Re: Replacing the variable names

AbuChowdhury — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 03:16:08 GMT

I have names of the variables in this way:

%let newvarlist= CA45245E1097 CH0018666781 US00208J1088 US0025671050 US0038301067 ..............;

Re: Replacing the variable names

Reeza — Fri, 20 Mar 2015 03:20:35 GMT

I'd recommend placing it into a dataset instead and using the answer from the link above. You wont need the first proc sql but the rest should be pretty much the same.