topic Re: labels in SAS Procedures

labels

haritha — Mon, 09 May 2016 23:13:09 GMT

How to find labels of a dataset while importing ".xlsx" file using datafile statement?

I tried Proc Contents using VARNUM, I'm getting the same variable names as label names.

Is there any other procedure to find actual labels?

Thanks,

Haritha

Re: labels

Reeza — Mon, 09 May 2016 23:21:31 GMT

If proc contents is showing the same values for name and label, that's how it was imported.

I believe the default is to import labels. Can you describe a bit more about what you're trying to do and what's not working as expected.

Re: labels

haritha — Mon, 09 May 2016 23:27:49 GMT

I'm importing a .xlsx file, which has some sample data, i want to find the labels for the variables.

But when i use Proc contents using varnum also, I'm getting labels as same as variables.

Re: labels

Reeza — Tue, 10 May 2016 02:40:05 GMT

Then thats how it was imported.

Why are you expecting different? What do you have and what do you want?

Post a snapshot of your file and your proc contents and what you want.

Re: labels

haritha — Tue, 10 May 2016 12:14:25 GMT

Thanks for your reply, I got it now. May the file has not defined with different labels.

Re: labels

ballardw — Tue, 10 May 2016 14:43:49 GMT

Excel does not have a concept of labels, it has the value of a cell and that is about it.

Depending on how you read data from Excel you may get the colum header text transformed to a valid SAS variable name.

For example if the Excel column header is "Measure taken @ date 01/23/2015"

Then SAS replaces all characters that are not letters, numbers or _ with an _ to create a varaible name.

If you want a LABEL that is more useful then you can use something like Proc Datasets to create a Label and/or rename the variables to be more amenable to programming.

I know I'm not going to type measure_taken___date_01_23_2015 very often in my code.

Re: labels

haritha — Tue, 10 May 2016 15:04:41 GMT

Thank you . it really helped me to understand