topic Having trouble adding blank lines in proc report in SAS Programming

Having trouble adding blank lines in proc report

cluelesssas — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:09:53 GMT

I'm having trouble adding blank lines in proc report. I'd like to have a blank line everytime the Make changes for improved readability. From googling I thought it's just the compute block part of my code below.

proc report data=sashelp.cars out=test_out(drop=_BREAK_);
	column Make Cylinders n;
	define Make / group;
	define Cylinders / group;
	define n / 'Count';
	compute after Make;
		line=' ';
	endcomp;
run;

Below is what the 1st few rows of what's in the report. I'd like blank rows where I indicated with <

And here is test_out. It seems extra rows are added (highlighted) but they are not blank. As a side note, note how row 2 repeats 'Acura' but above only has each Make 1x. This part is also confusing to me.

Does any1 know how to actually get blank rows? Thx in advance for any help 🙂

Re: Having trouble adding blank lines in proc report

Tom — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:16:31 GMT

Use the LINE statement. Your code it trying to make new variable named LINE.

proc report data=sashelp.cars;
	column Make Cylinders n;
	define Make / group;
	define Cylinders / group;
	define n / 'Count';
	compute after Make;
		line @1 ' ';
	endcomp;
run;

PS Why are you use the OUT= option on PROC REPORT? If you want to make a dataset then why not just run a data step?

proc summary data=sashelp.cars nway;
  class Make Cylinders ;
  output out=test(drop=_type_ rename=(_freq_=Count));
run;

data test;
  set test;
  by make;
  output;
  if last.make then do;
    call missing(of _all_);
    output;
  end;
run;

proc print;
run;

Re: Having trouble adding blank lines in proc report

cluelesssas — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 02:21:56 GMT

Thx Tom. I was dumb I didn't see there wasn't an = in the line statement.

As for why I tried to save output from proc report, it's because the deliverable I needed to make asked for the same summary tables to be put on multiple different sheets. Since the reports take some time to generate I didn't want to have SAS generate the exact same thing multiple times.

I think the way to go for me to save output is something like what you did in your 2nd code snippet.

proc report data=in_data out=out_summary;
*do a lot of stuff;
run;

proc report data=out_summary; *still not sure why this wont print the exact same thing!;
run;

Re: Having trouble adding blank lines in proc report

Tom — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 02:31:28 GMT

It does print the same thing because that is not what PROC REPORT is intended to do. PROC REPORT is for printing reports. Not sure what value is gotten out of saving the data it generated, but if you want that to reprint you probably need to use a different PROC REPORT step that the one you used to generate those statistics.

It will probably be much easier to just use normal SAS code to generate the statistics, like the PROC SUMMARY step I showed. Then you can print it with PROC PRINT or perhaps with PROC REPORT if you want some formatting that PROC PRINT cannot do.

Of if you literally need the same output printed over and over then perhaps use PROC DOCUMENT to copy the ODS generate output multiple times?