topic Re: Vname function understanding in SAS Programming

Vname function understanding

David_Billa — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:21:32 GMT

Can someone help me understand the below line which has vname funcion?

FISC_YEAR = put(input(substr(vname(x),find(vname(x),"_",-length(vname(x)))+2),2.),z2.);

Re: Vname function understanding

PaigeMiller — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 10:52:45 GMT

I think someone has found a very difficult way to do something very simple. But it seems as if you have changed the actual variable name to X, which doesn't really help. What was the actual variable name?

David, you need to run this code and see what value of FISC_YEAR results and what the value of X was. You can add PUT statements into your data step code, or just examine the output data set.

Re: Vname function understanding

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 12:01:57 GMT

This would make some sense if x was in fact a reference to an array (not a single variable) and the code was part of a DO OVER block.

Posting single statements out of context is usually very un-helpful.

Re: Vname function understanding

MarkusWeick — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 13:21:42 GMT

Hi @David_Billa,

following the reply of @Kurt_Bremser, I would assume that the variable names in the array are of the form "%%%%_YY" with the "YY" being the last two digits of the year. Your function than extracts the YY as a numeric with showing an eventual leading "0" in the format z2.

Best

Markus

Re: Vname function understanding

FreelanceReinh — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 14:22:24 GMT

@MarkusWeick wrote:

I would assume that the variable names in the array are of the form "%%%%_YY" with the "YY" being the last two digits of the year.

I would expect one additional character between the last underscore and "YY" because otherwise the INPUT function would start to read at the second digit of the year ("YY").

Re: Vname function understanding

MarkusWeick — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 14:32:33 GMT

I think you are right. I didn't count carefully enough.

Re: Vname function understanding

mkeintz — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 19:10:17 GMT

@MarkusWeick wrote:

Hi @David_Billa,

following the reply of @Kurt_Bremser, I would assume that the variable names in the array are of the form "%%%%_YY" with the "YY" being the last two digits of the year. Your function than extracts the YY as a numeric with showing an eventual leading "0" in the format z2.

Best

Markus

Even so, and even if the offset were corrected, this is an ugly way to get the fiscal year. SCAN for the last (i.e. "-1") word separated by '_' would be much easier:


DATA _NULL_;
   ARRAY X {*} assets_74  assets_75  assets_76 (3*0);
   DO i=1 to 3;
     FISC_YEAR=INPUT(SCAN(VNAME(X{i}),-1,'_'),2.);
     put i= x{i}= fisc_year=;
   end;
run;

Of course, if the FISC_YEAR calculation is inside a loop, then other within-loop work better be done, because FISC_YEAR will keep only the last value.

The problem statement definitely needs context.

Re: Vname function understanding

Kurt_Bremser — Fri, 15 Jul 2022 23:18:42 GMT

And instead of using an array, I would transpose first and then extract the year from _NAME_..