topic Re: Concatenate many datasets in SAS Programming

Concatenate many datasets

Demographer — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 14:50:29 GMT

Hello,

I have a bunch of datasets labels a1y b2y c3y.

I would like to concatenate them into a single one, which would have a variable indicating the name of the original dataset.

It's probably easy, but I didn't find how.

Thank you

Re: Concatenate many datasets

Kurt_Bremser — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 15:01:09 GMT

data want;
set
  a1y
  b2y
  c3y
  indsname=_inname
;
inname = _inname;
run;

If you're having a larger bunch of datasets, you might consider to use a data _null_step with call execute to build that data step.

Re: Concatenate many datasets

ballardw — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 15:35:24 GMT

Good practice would be to set the length of the inname variable so the whole dataset name fits. Length of $ 41 will allow for the maximum 8 characters for library, the period separator and 32 characters for the data set.

If you have similar named sets like: A1y A2y A3y you can use a List modifier of a colon after the stem to get all similar names. A: would include all data sets in the library whose names start with A for instance.