topic proc sort character variables in SAS Procedures

proc sort character variables

dart926 — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 15:52:17 GMT

Hello everyone, I have a question regarding proc sort. Anyone can help? Thanks in advance!

For example I have a dataset "survey", and a character variable "question" and want to sort it.

I hope to get the ideal sequence order, but I got the sorted sequence in the middle column. I wonder whether it is possible to get the ideal sequence in SAS? Thanks!!!

proc sort data=survey;

by question;

run;

original sequence	after sorting	ideal sequence
q2	q1	q1
q3	q10	q2
q4	q2	q3
q5	q3	q4
q1	q4	q5
q7	q5	q6
q10	q6	q7
q8	q7	q8
q9	q8	q9
q6	q9	q10

Re: proc sort character variables

art297 — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:08:55 GMT

I think you are looking for the following:

data survey;

input question $;

cards;

q10

;

proc sort data=survey SORTSEQ=linguistic

(NUMERIC_COLLATION=ON);

by question;

run;

Re: proc sort character variables

dart926 — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:15:56 GMT

Hi Authur,

This is exactly what I wanted. Thank you so much!!!

Yanmin

Re: proc sort character variables

Ksharp — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 01:50:47 GMT

Or a SQL way which has more power.

data survey;
  input question $;
  cards;
q2
q3
q4
q5
q1
q7
q10
q8
q9
q6
;
run;
proc sql;
 create table want as
  select * from survey order by input(compress(question, ,'kd'),best8.);
quit;

Ksharp

Re: proc sort character variables

dart926 — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 21:21:43 GMT

Thank you so much, Ksharp!

Your Sql code works very well. It is great to know both methods work.