topic Re: Keep vs Retain Statement in SAS Programming

Keep vs Retain Statement

DMMD — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 17:56:08 GMT

Could someone tell me the difference between Keep and Retain statements for SAS?

Thanks!

Re: Keep vs Retain Statement

chrej5am — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:00:34 GMT

keeps refers to the variable beeing read or written in the dataset

retain stores the value of a variable between observations, it surpresses reseting of the variable

Re: Keep vs Retain Statement

ballardw — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 18:04:46 GMT

In addition ot @chrej5am, Keep (and Drop) can be a data set option and used anywhere a dataset is used to restrict the variables used by a procedure. Retain is only valid in a data step.

Re: Keep vs Retain Statement

Kurt_Bremser — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 08:13:38 GMT

Adding to what @chrej5am said, retain works reliably only with newly created variables. Variables that are already present in the input dataset(s) will be overwritten anytime a new observation is read.