topic how do i rename a column name with a unicode character in SAS Programming

how do i rename a column name with a unicode character

didexist0001 — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 07:24:33 GMT

I am trying to add the character mu(µ) on the column name of my sas7bdat file but it gets recognized as "?".

Re: how do i rename a column name with a unicode character

PaigeMiller — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 10:36:09 GMT

Better you should put this in a label instead of the variable name. SAS will use the label in the output of almost every PROC.

Re: how do i rename a column name with a unicode character

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 10:40:50 GMT

DO NOT DO THIS.

Funny characters belong in labels, not in variable names. Otherwise you will always be forced to use those silly name literals.

Re: how do i rename a column name with a unicode character

ballardw — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 13:53:27 GMT

The question mark indicates that the font used does not recognize how to render the given "text" of the character.

It will probably not take you very long writing code to get extremely tired of typing all of the quote and n referencing variable names. Using something like '(a)'n adds 7 key strokes, counting the Shift to get the ( and ) to something that can be expressed with just A.

Define a label one time when creating the variable and you don't have to repeatedly type the '()'n.

Plus I know I hate being given code or data that forces me to change my system settings just to run the code or examine the data.

Re: how do i rename a column name with a unicode character

Tom — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:34:16 GMT

How are you submitting your SAS code? Are you use Display Manager? SAS/Studio? Enterprise Guide?

What system encoding is set in your SAS session? Check the value of the ENCODING system option.

If you paste a literal mu character into the code file then the encoding used by that literal string has to match the encoding your SAS session is using. And since mu is not one of the 128 standard ASCII characters it might not even be available in the encoding you are using.

If you really did need to generate a RENAME statement or a LABEL statement using a character that is not supported by your SAS sessions encoding then you might want to use macro logic to help. So let's assume you need to generate mu in UTF-8 encoding. That would be 'CEBC'x. So you might do something like:

data _null_;
  call symputx('mu','CEBC'x);
run;
data have;
   input myvar ;
   label myvar="(/&mu.L)";
cards;
2
2
0
0
;
proc print data=have label;
run;

Result