topic Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types between in SAS Programming

Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types between

Gick — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 04:49:10 GMT

Hello, I have several sas tables (T1, T2, T3, etc.) I want to concatenate its different tables.

I do the data step correctly with the set instruction. But I get empty lines. On the documentation, it states to see the types of certain variables and to order the variables. I've done it but I still get empty observations.
I cannot send an extract of the bases because I cannot find the examples that I know how to create to reflect the problem. Thank you for understanding.

Can anyone give me some hints ?

THANKS.
Gick

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

Kurt_Bremser — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 05:49:54 GMT

Please post the complete log of your DATA step, and describe in detail what you mean by "empty lines".

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

LinusH — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 08:23:36 GMT

Same name but different data type, that won't work properly.
One way managing things is to create view(s) to align the data sets so they look the same (variable names, data types, lenghts).

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

Gick — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:12:04 GMT

For certain variables, I have missing data even though all my tables are filled.

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

Gick — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 10:13:03 GMT

I also did what you just said.

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

Patrick — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 13:04:54 GMT

@Gick Put yourself into our shoes and try to imagine if you really could say what you're doing with the depth and breath of information you've provided so far. Thank you for your understanding.

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

ballardw — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 15:58:53 GMT

I'm going to repeat something in a bit more detail that you aren't paying attention to:

If variables of the same name are of different data types then one or more sets of the values will be missing in the output because a variable can only be ONE TYPE in a data set, either character or numeric. If you try to put an "ABC" into a variable that is numeric it will always fail, result in a missing value and generally the log will tell you that you did something wrong.

In this case I would expect an error such as this shows from attempting to combine two sets with the same named variable of different types:

196  data one;
197    x=123;
198  run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.ONE has 1 observations and 1 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds


199
200  data two;
201    x='ABC';
202  run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.TWO has 1 observations and 1 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.01 seconds
      cpu time            0.01 seconds


203
204  data combined;
205    set one
206        two
207    ;
ERROR: Variable x has been defined as both character and numeric.
208  run;

NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
WARNING: The data set WORK.COMBINED may be incomplete.  When this step was
         stopped there were 0 observations and 1 variables.
NOTE: DATA statement used (Total process time):
      real time           0.00 seconds
      cpu time            0.00 seconds

Depending on what you have been doing, exact code and data sets you may be looking at an earlier data set as a result. But that is why we have asked you to show the LOG of your attempt, including the code and all the notes, messages, warnings and/or errors like above.

Re: Concatenation of several tables with the same variable names but some are of different types bet

Reeza — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 17:37:08 GMT

How were these datasets created? Did you create them? If so, the best solution is to back up a step and avoid the issue in the first place.