topic Re: Working on the SAS variable name only in SAS Procedures

Working on the SAS variable name only

Fred_Gavin — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:43:32 GMT

Is there anyone know how to perform the data manipulation on the SAS variable name only?

So far, every time the performance that referred to a variable is on its data below the variable name. But wot if I only want to use that variable name for my purpose? ie.

TWO TWOVO TLE TLEVO TLC TLCVO
1 1
3 3
4 5
5 6

I want to delete the variable name contains 'VO', how can I do it?
Thanks

Re: Working on the SAS variable name only

andreas_lds — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:06:09 GMT

Examine the sashelp.vcolumn view. It contains everything you need to create a drop-statement for proc sql.
[pre]
proc sql noprint;
select name
into :kill_list separated by ','
from sashelp.vcolumn
where memname = upcase('NAME_OF_YOUR_DATASET') and index(upcase(name), 'VO') > 0;

alter table NAME_OF_YOUR_DATASET
drop &kill_list;
quit;
[/pre]

Untested.

Re: Working on the SAS variable name only

DanielSantos — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:09:15 GMT

Hello Fred.

You could access to the metadata of the the table (say with proc contents or dictionary.columns), build a macro variable with the list of the desired columns and then perform a DROP of those (always rewriting the dataset).

/* get table info */
proc contents data = YOURDATA out = _CONTENTS noprint;
run;

/* buil DROPLIST */
%let DROPLIST=;
data _null_;
set _CONTENTS;
where index(upcase(NAME),'VO'); /* Var names who contains 'VO' */
call symput('DROPLIST',catx(' ',symget('DROPLIST'),NAME));
run;

/* rewrite the dataset and drop the desired Vars */
%put &DROPLIST;
data YOURDATA;
set YOURDATA;
drop &DROPLIST;
run;

Greetings from Portugal.

Daniel Santos at www.cgd.pt