topic Re: Assigning zero values to an array in SAS Enterprise Guide

Assigning zero values to an array

deleted_user — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:58:33 GMT

Hi. I would like to initialise my array by assigning each element with a zero value. I can do this through a do loop but I thought that I could do something neater / better by doing something like this:

Array Var{5} (0 0 0 0 0);
or Array Var{5} (5*0); ??

but this seems to make the array possess some sort of RETAIN feature which is not what I want. Any ideas?

Re: Assigning zero values to an array

LinusH — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:24:52 GMT

From on-line doc:
"When any (or all) elements are assigned initial values, all elements behave as if they were named on a RETAIN statement."

In this case, it would nice to say something like:

var{*} = 0;

but you can't. So I guess you are stuck with doing a do loop.

/Linus

Re: Assigning zero values to an array

data_null__ — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 19:09:33 GMT

I have had some success with this using SET with the POINT= option.

This example is completely contrived but it may serve well enough to illustrate a way to initialize a list of variables without looping over all the elements of an array.

[pre]
data initArray;
array v[5];
retain v 0;
run;
data workWithArray;
array v[5];
do i = 1 to 6;
if i in(1,2,4) then set initArray point=point;
else do j = 1 to dim(v);
v = ranuni(1);
end;
output;
end;
retain point 1;
stop;
run;
proc print;
run;
[pre]