topic Re: Exit a SAS script based on a condition in SAS Programming

Exit a SAS script based on a condition

tstjean — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 12:19:56 GMT

I want to be able to check if a SAS dataset has any observations.

It is has 0 observations, I want to exit the SAS script.

Any suggestions on what I would do?

Re: Exit a SAS script based on a condition

PaigeMiller — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 12:30:49 GMT

You can write a macro that only executes more code if the number of observations is > 0, and it stops executing if the number of observations is = 0.

%macro example;
    proc sql noprint;
        select count(variablename) into :nobs from datasetname;
    quit;
    %if &nobs>0 %then %do;
             .... whatever SAS code you want ....
    %end;
%mend;

Re: Exit a SAS script based on a condition

ChrisWard — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 13:16:46 GMT

There are various ways to check the obs, the previous comment contains one. To exit a sas script the abort statement is probably an option for you.

https://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000230210.htm

Re: Exit a SAS script based on a condition

tstjean — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 13:30:19 GMT

Thanks for both options. I will take a look at both.

Re: Exit a SAS script based on a condition

RW9 — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 14:21:29 GMT

To me, that sounds like a bad idea. Personally, if your code doesn't create anything then there should be some defensive coding which creates and outpu stating there is no results. Any abort/abend in code I use is pulled out as a problem, code should flow through without any errors, warnings, abnormal exits, and the final output should be qc'able even if only to confirm zero observations.