topic Re: Removing dups in dataset in SAS Programming

Removing dups in dataset

SASPreK — Wed, 29 May 2024 23:02:48 GMT

I have the following input dataset

ID Var1 Var2

11 A 23

11 B 121

11 A 23

12 A 32

12 B 158

12 A 32

12 B 158

13 A 87

13 B 567

I want to remove the repetitive records by ID variable and get the following output.

ID Var1 Var2

11 A 23

11 B 121

12 A 32

12 B 158

13 A 87

13 B 567

Please suggest the best way to do it.

Re: Removing dups in dataset

ballardw — Wed, 29 May 2024 22:49:13 GMT

Not possible. SAS will not allow two variables with the same name.

If the third column is VAR2:

data have;
   input ID   Var1 $   Var2 ;
datalines;
11       A          23
11       B          121
11       A          23
12      A          32
12      B           158
12      A           32
12      B           158
13      A            87
13      B            567
;

Then easiest code is:

proc sort data=have out=want nodupkey;
   by id var1 var2;
run;

The NODUPKEY option tells SAS to sort the data but only allow one observation with each combination of the BY variables in the OUT= data set.

There are options to send the deleted observations to a different output set.

Re: Removing dups in dataset

SASPreK — Fri, 31 May 2024 15:22:27 GMT

Thank you so much for the solution, this works! I have edited my question to name the variables as Var1 and Var2, thank you for catching that 🙂