topic Re: Swap a portion of data between columns in SAS Programming

Swap a portion of data between columns

NKormanik — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:58:51 GMT

Here's one that Excel can do, so I'll use Excel if no fairly easy SAS way is possible.

Note following portion of data set:

Combo	Var_1	Var_2
20101_21603	0.	-1.94930
20101_21603	0.	-1.80663
20101_21603	0.	-1.66396
20101_21603	0.	-1.52129
21603_20101	-0.80794	0.
21603_20101	-0.66527	0.
21603_20101	-0.52260	0.
21603_20101	-0.37993	0.

Focus only on the Var_1 and Var_2 columns..., at least for the time being.

I need to "swap" the contents of the bottom four rows of cells.

Does SAS have a way to do this -- without your having to write tons of code?

Thanks much.

Nicholas Kormanik

Re: Swap a portion of data between columns

RichardinOz — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:08:37 GMT

There is no data step swap function (I've occasionally wished for it) but you can temporarily create another column say temp, then use code such as

If (condition to select rows to swap)

then do ;

temp = Var_1 ;

Var_1 = Var2 ;

Var_2 = temp ;

end ;

drop temp ;

You can also do it in sql, without creating a temp column but it is a lot more verbose.

Richard

Re: Swap a portion of data between columns

LinusH — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 10:12:13 GMT

Unclear where you write the line for tons , but here goes (assuming that you need to store column with values <> 0 in one column):

proc sql;

update mytable

set var_2 = var_1

where var_1 <> 0 and var_2 = 0

;

quit;

Comparing to Excel is puzzling me. Excel is great when doing minor ad-hoc stuff, SAS is suited for developing programs that can be used multiple times, in batch etc.