topic How to concat multiple variable with different name in SAS Programming

How to concat multiple variable with different name

animesh123 — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:01:41 GMT

So I have code where I want concat multiple(almost 30) variable with different variable name

For now am using ;

New = name||age||gender||sex||dob||addrees

Like this I have 30 var to concat

is there are any efficent way to do this

Re: How to concat multiple variable with different name

PaigeMiller — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:27:24 GMT

If the variables are consecutive in the data set, so you want to concatenate all variables from firstvariablename to lastvariablename, use

newvariable=cat(of firstvariablename -- lastvariablename);

Other possibilities exist, depending on the location in the data set and whether variables are all numeric or all character. Do tell us more about this.

Also, I question how having all this information in a a very long text variable is a superior way to arrange your data compared to leaving them as individual variables. Why do you need this?

Re: How to concat multiple variable with different name

Tom — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 15:39:03 GMT

First is use one of the newer concatenation functions instead of the || operator.

Check out CATS() or CATX() as the most useful. But there are others.

Once you are doing that you can then use variable lists in the function call. That requires you to use the OF keyword.

string=catx('|',of name -- address);
string=catx('|',of _character_);
string=catx('|',of _all_);

Depending on the list and the dataset it might even be easier to use the DROP= dataset option to so that you only have to list the variables you don't want to include instead of the ones you do want.

data want;
  set have(drop=ignore_me);
  length string $200;
  string = catx('|',of _all_);
  set have;
run;