topic Re: Data Step behaviour in SAS Programming

Data Step behaviour

rmlmrmlm — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 17:49:02 GMT

Hello.

Imagine this example data set:

Var_Parent Var_Child

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

Car Ford

Car Fiat

Car Chevrolet

Animal Cat

Animal Cow

Animal Pig

Country Portugal

Country UK

Country USA

I want to copy this data set to a new one, to stay like this (literally).

As you can see, I want to OUTPUT "Begin of " every time Var_Parent changes.

Var

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

Begin of Car

Ford

Fiat

Chevrolet

End of Car

Begin of Animal

Cat

Cow

Pig

End of Animal

Begin of Country

Portugal

USA

End of Country

Can someone help me, please?

Thank you!

Re: Data Step behaviour

mkeintz — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 18:08:39 GMT

data want (keep=text);

set have;

by var_parent notsorted;

length text $24;

if first.var_parent then do;

text=catx(' ','Begin of',var_parent);

output;

end;

text=var_child;

output;

run;

if last.var_parent then do;

text=catx(' ','End of',var_parent);

output;

end;

run;

edit: forgot my notes:

Notes:

The BY statement generate two dummy vars, first.var_parent and last.var_parent, indicating whether the record in hand is the first or last of a by-group.
The "notsorted" option tells SAS to expect the data to be grouped by var_parent, but not neccessarily in ascending order

Re: Data Step behaviour

Reeza — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 18:19:48 GMT

You want this as a data set or text file?

Re: Data Step behaviour

rmlmrmlm — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 10:59:03 GMT

@Reeza, yes as a data set.

@mkeintz reply was perfect.

Thank you all!