topic Re: Delete occurrences by keeping the most recent date in SAS Procedures

Delete occurrences by keeping the most recent date

John4 — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 10:31:32 GMT

I have a data set like this :

ID NAME BEGIN END

345 CARL 16MAR2017 31MAR2017

345 CARL 03APR2017 30APR2017

120 ROSA 01JAN2017 14FEB2017

120 ROSA 02DEC2016 31DEC2016

How can I delete occurence but taking the most recent date ? I mean get some thing like this :

ID NAME BEGIN END

345 CARL 03APR2017 30APR2017

120 ROSA 01JAN2017 14FEB2017

Re: Delete occurrences by keeping the most recent date

Astounding — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 10:09:57 GMT

SAS can handle this easily enough, but the solution in part depends on whether your BEGIN and END variables are valid SAS dates vs. whether they are character strings. PROC CONTENTS will tell you that. If they are valid SAS dates:

proc sort data=have;

by id begin;

run;

data want;

set have;

by id begin;

if last.id;

run;

If your dates are actually character strings, does "JANV" actually appear in your data, or is that supposed to be "JAN"? If there are invalid dates (which would include "JANV") they would need to be fixed first. Then ...

data want;

set have;

begin_sasdate = input(begin, date9.);

end_sasdate = input(end, date9.);

format begin_sasdate end_sasdate date9.;

run;

proc sort data=want;

by id begin_sasdate;

run;

data want;

set want;

by id begin_sasdate;

if last.id;

run;

It's the same approach, but this approach requires that your data contain SAS dates, not character strings.

Re: Delete occurrences by keeping the most recent date

John4 — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 10:27:05 GMT

yes its valid date (I edit the topic, its JAN instead of JANV)