topic Re: variable selection : keep if exists in SAS Programming

variable selection : keep if exists

Aboiron — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:31:40 GMT

I have several databases, one per geographical variables, that I want to append in the end. I am doing some data steps on them. As I have large databases, I select only the variables I need when I first call each table. But on tables in which one variable always equals 0, the variable is not in the table.

So when I select my (keep=var) in a for loop, it works fine if the variable exists, but it produces an error in the other case, so that these tables are ignored.

do i=1 to 10 ; 

data temp; 
     set area_i(keep= var1 var2); 
run; 

proc append base=want data=temp force; 
run;

Is there a simple way to tackle that ?

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:42:54 GMT

You can suppress the generation of an ERROR with options nodsfnerr;

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Ksharp — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 12:52:51 GMT

DKRICOND=ERROR | WARN | WARNING | NOWARN

DKROCOND=ERROR | WARN | WARNING | NOWARN

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

RW9 — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:08:06 GMT

You could also create an empty template dataset, and set this with your data so the variables you require are never missing:

proc sql;

create table TEMPLATE (VAR1 char(200),VAR2 char(200));

quit;

data temp (keep=var1 var2) ;

set area_i template;

run;

That way temp will always have var1 and var2.

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Aboiron — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:08:35 GMT

It worked, thanks a lot !

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Aboiron — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:09:52 GMT

I am afraid it will add too much time, as it adds one dataset creation. I have millions of observations, so this might matters.

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Aboiron — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:10:25 GMT

I did not find any occurence of your option :smileyconfused:

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:18:00 GMT

Brain fart. SAS(R) 9.2 Language Reference: Dictionary, Fourth Edition describes it, but it is used to suppress errors caused by nonexisting datasets.

Xia Keshan has the correct solution.

Re: variable selection : keep if exists

RW9 — Thu, 30 Oct 2014 13:22:21 GMT

Sorry, I was going on the example you had given. If you are dealing with large amount of datasets then you want a better way of working. Check the metadata and then generate the program from that. Whilst there are ways to get around warnings and such like, they do come out for a reason. IMO I would try to fix these rather than remove them from the log. E.g.

proc sql;

select distinct NAME

into :TABLE1 separated by " "

from SASHELP.VCOLUMN

where LIBNAME="WORK"

and MEMNAME="DATASET"

and NAME in ("VAR1","VAR2");

select distinct NAME

into :TABLE2 separated by " "

from SASHELP.VCOLUMN

where LIBNAME="WORK"

and MEMNAME="DATASET"

and NAME in ("VAR1","VAR2");

/* Note, probably easier ways to get the macro lists I am typing this quickly */

quit;

data want;

set table1 (keep=id &table1.)

table2 (keep=id &table2.);

run;