topic Re: Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement in SAS Programming

Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement

dwsmith — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:08:43 GMT

I want to delete the last record if certain conditions apply. However, I am getting the following error:

ERROR 68-185: The function CONTAINS is unknown, or cannot be accessed.

Here is what I am working on:

data test;
	format date date9.;
	input sn $
		  date
		  ctry $
		  source $;
	datalines;
	1 20000 US PL
	1 20001 US PL
	1 20005 US CIM  /*this would be removed*/
	2 20000 CA SOS
	2 25000 FR CIM  /*this would be kept*/
	;
run;

proc sort data = test;
	by sn date ctry;
run;

data test2;
	set test;
	by sn;
	if last.ctry = lag1(last.ctry) and (abs(last.date - lag1(last.date) < 180) 
		and source contains ('CIM') then delete;
run;

Re: Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement

ballardw — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:26:53 GMT

Simple SAS does not have a datastep condition CONTAINS though it is availabe in Proc SQL. There are a number of other methods. I would likely use

... and index(source,'CIM') > 0 then

If source might actual have lower case versions such as "cim" "Cim" "CiM" that you want to match as well then use

index( Upcase(source),'CIM') >0

Re: Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement

RW9 — Fri, 27 May 2016 14:28:15 GMT

You will have read the documentation yes?

http://support.sas.com/kb/43/303.html

Contains only works on where clauses, you want:

and index(source,"CIM") > 0 then...

Re: Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement

FreelanceReinh — Fri, 27 May 2016 16:52:57 GMT

Also, what do you expect LAST.CTRY and LAST.DATE to contain, given that neither CTRY nor DATE appears in the BY statement (cf. section "Processing BY Groups" in the documentation)?

-------------------

Side note: It's interesting to see that FIRST.xxx and LAST.xxx variables with arbitrary names xxx can be freely used as temporary (i.e. automatically dropped) variables which are automatically retained and initialized to zero (not as index variables of DO loops, though). Fun example:

data test;
set sashelp.class end=eof;
first.xy=sqrt(first.xy+1);
last.abc=1/(last.abc+1);
if eof then put first.xy= / last.abc= ;
run;

Re: Deleting records with last.variable with a multi conditional if statement

PGStats — Fri, 27 May 2016 17:43:39 GMT

@FreelanceReinh, interesting, but harmful knowledge. I hope I will never have to look at such coding!