topic Re: How to search variables in SAS? in SAS Health and Life Sciences

How to search variables in SAS?

deleted_user — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:45:09 GMT

The data set I use is very large. There are hundreds of variables and I want to search whether some variable like "FIN" is included in the data set.
How can I do?

Another question is that: There are 40,000 observations and I want to choose some observations with "FIN=10181" and "FIN=10182" and "FIN=10183" and so on. How can I do that?

Thanks so much for your help.

Re: How to search variables in SAS?

sbb — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:25:59 GMT

Explore using DICTIONARY.COLUMNS with PROC SQL to analyze any SAS data library and/or member that has been declared with the LIBNAME statement.

If using PROC SQL or DATA/PROC step, you can select/filter using the IN operator in your WHERE statement/clause. Or you can string out the data-values as constants using IF OR OR THEN DO;

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.

Recommended Google advanced search arguments, this topic/post:

dictionary columns site:sas.com

where in operator site:sas.com

Re: How to search variables in SAS?

abdullala — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:04:13 GMT

other approaches in addition to using dictionary:

1. right-click on the dataset and choose 'view columns'
2. use proc contents

Re: How to search variables in SAS?

sbb — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:39:01 GMT

Agreed - also, PROCs like MEANS and FREQ can be quite useful for SAS database/variable/column "discovery".

Scott Barry
SBBWorks, Inc.