topic Re: RETAIN will not retain in SAS Programming

RETAIN will not retain

steve_citi — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:35:27 GMT

Can't figure out why the retain statement will not hold the value of holdbroke or brokefound.
Can someone explain why?

The idea of the code is to capture the month when delbnd is greater than or equal to 3, and place it on ever subsequent record for the customer.

data forbearance3;
retain holdbroke;
retain brokefound 0;
holdbroke=.;
set forbearance2;
by cust_no asofmonth;
if first.cust_no then do; brokefound=0; conbrokemon=.; end;

if brokefound=0 then do;
if delbnd>=3 then do;
holdbroke=asofmonth;
brokefound=1;
end;
else;

end;

if brokefound=1 then do;
conbrokemon=holdbroke;
end;
run;

Re: RETAIN will not retain

sbb — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:44:22 GMT

You have code that assigns a missing value with every DATA step pass. Suggest you might want to add this line of code for self-debugging and some desk-checking of your program (add multiple occurences and assign unique nn to keep track where your program is generating the diagnostic messages to the SAS log):

PUTLOG '>DIAG-nn' / _ALL_;

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

Suggested Google advanced search argument, this topic/post:

data step programming retain statement site:sas.com

Re: RETAIN will not retain

steve_citi — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:55:57 GMT

Thanks. To be honest, even though I've been looking at the code, trying to figure the problem out, I did not even notice that statement was still there!!

Re: RETAIN will not retain

sbb — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:27:20 GMT

Using the PUTLOG (new with SAS v9, previously used PUT with FILE LOG;) will help with the condition - it helps me all the time and I've been using SAS for 25+ years.

Scott