topic Re: Converting Names into Number in Statistical Procedures

Converting Names into Number

brownster — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:49:12 GMT

I am trying to convert all last names of a patient to the number 0. Writing out each last name is not realistic as I have over 2 million last names. Is there a way to do this? I am trying to recode names present to 0 and missing to 1.

Re: Converting Names into Number

PaigeMiller — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:51:01 GMT

If I am understanding you properly

newvariable = missing(last_name);

Re: Converting Names into Number

ballardw — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:56:36 GMT

If you want to do something like missing nonmissing you do not need to convert anything.

In a data step

MissingName = missing(yournamevariable);

will create a new variable named MissingName and if the variable is missing, i.e. blank, then will be assigned the value of 1 and 0 otherwise. Missing is one of the functions that works with both character and numeric variables.

If you want to overwrite the value in the name then you convert the result to text using the PUt function

name = put(missing(name),1. );

The format 1. means just use one character for the result so the value will be in the first column of the name variable.