topic Re: How to differentiate a column value is a null or blank? in SAS Procedures

How to differentiate a column value is a null or blank?

deleted_user — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:20:12 GMT

Hi guys,

If I have a column that accept null value, how can I check whether the column is a null or is a blank(' ')?

Is there a function for it?

Thanks

Yours Sincerely,
helphelp

Re: How to differentiate a column value is a null or blank?

LinusH — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:08:21 GMT

I assume this is a char column.
In SAS, blank means MISSING (aka NULL), which is different compared to how most RDBMS work. If your data does not reside in SAS table, you could might use SQL pass-thru to accomplish this.
/Linus

Re: How to differentiate a column value is a null or blank?

sfleming — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:20:31 GMT

There is also a MISSING() function in the datastep. It accepts both numeric and character variables. They syntax to check whether a variable called VAR1 has a missing value would be:

if missing(VAR1) then ...

Re: How to differentiate a column value is a null or blank?

Cynthia_sas — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:13:12 GMT

Hi:
This documentation topic contains some useful information. Partly it depends on whether you are accessing relational database data or other data and what -exactly- NULL means in that data format.

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/acreldb/61890/HTML/default/a001924296.htm

cynthia