topic Retain with Arrays in SAS Programming

Retain with Arrays

TashaChapman14 — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:16:17 GMT

I have a scenario where I have missing data that I would like to fill in with the previous (non-missing) observation. So, for example my data looks like so:

Obs FFY2012

1 0.0

2 0.2

3 .

4 0.3

5 0.5

6 0.8

....

And I want to fill in Obs #3 with 0.2 (i.e., the value from Obs #2).

So I wrote up this code and it works well...

if ffy2012 = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear2012 = 0;
	if ffy2012 ne . then ffyear2012 = ffy2012;
	retain ffyear2012;

(Open_cit_lag_c = 0 is the first observation, and sometimes this value is missing as well. Just FYI...)

However, I have 5 such variables that need to be fixed, so I tried to write this up as an array, like so:

array FFY{5} FFY2011 FFY2012 FFY2013 FFY2014 FFY2015;
array FFYEAR{5} FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
do i = 1 to 5;
	if ffy{i} = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear{i} = 0;
	if ffy{i} ne . then ffyear{i} = ffy{i};
	retain ffyear{i};
	end;

And it errored out at the retain statement. It's early in the morning, so it's possible that I'm missing something small. But I'm wondering if my use of a retain statement within the array do loop is causing some sort of crossing of streams? Anywho, any thoughts would help.

Re: Retain with Arrays

Tom — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:27:32 GMT

Don't put the RETAIN in the loop, It is not an executable statement.

array FFY FFY2011 FFY2012 FFY2013 FFY2014 FFY2015;
array FFYEAR FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
retain FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
do i = 1 to dim(FFY);
  if ffy{i} = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear{i} = 0;
  if ffy{i} ne . then ffyear{i} = ffy{i};
end;

Note that if you assign initial values in the ARRAY statement then SAS will automatically retain the values.

array FFYEAR FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015 (5*.);

Re: Retain with Arrays

TashaChapman14 — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 16:25:28 GMT

Slick! That fixed it. Thanks!