topic Re: Error Variable not found in SAS Procedures

Error Variable not found

md11r0 — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 23:28:41 GMT

The variables I have are Community, CommunityName, BirthRate, BelowPovLev, Crowded, Dependency, NoHSDiploma, Income, and Unemployment.

I have imported the CSV file, and with Proc Print, every variable shows up in the table. When I try to do any other procedure like sgscatter or corr, the variable Unemployment is not found. There are no spelling errors as I have copied and pasted the word from the Excel file.

56 Proc sgscatter Data=Teen;

57 MATRIX Community BirthRate BelowPovLev Crowded Dependency NoHSDiploma Income

58 Unemployment;

ERROR: Variable UNEMPLOYMENT not found.

59 Run;

What am I doing wrong?

Re: Error Variable not found

ChrisHemedinger — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 23:40:38 GMT

Best guess is that there is a subtle difference in the name that you're not noticing. Try running

proc contents data=teen; run;

and see what the output shows for the variable names.

Re: Error Variable not found

md11r0 — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 23:45:34 GMT

Is this what you're referring to? If so, what do I get from this table?

Re: Error Variable not found

ChrisHemedinger — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 23:49:26 GMT

Unemployment is a character variable, and I think it needs to be a numeric to be part of the MATRIX statement. That's a misleading error message if that's the case, I'll admit.

If Unemployment is supposed be numeric, check your import step to ensure that variable is defined properly and read with a numeric informat.

Re: Error Variable not found

md11r0 — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 23:54:02 GMT

Okay. In the actual Excel file, everything under Unemployment is numeric. How would I get SAS to read it as numeric? I haven't worked much with Proc Import, sorry.

Re: Error Variable not found

Reeza — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 03:30:47 GMT

When you import your CSV file check your log. The code will be in the log. Copy this code and customize as required by changing the informats/formats.

Re: Error Variable not found

RW9 — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 08:32:40 GMT

If it is a CSV file, then write a datastep to read in the file exactly as you know the data to be. Don't rely on proc import to guess things for you.

Re: Error Variable not found

ballardw — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 14:41:38 GMT

Open the CSV file with something like NOTEPAD or WORDPAD, not Excel, and see if there are any quotes around the values you think should be numeric. Of if the first few rows of data are missing for the variable then Import may assume they are character if the Guessingrows wasn't set high enough (defaults to 20 I believe).