How to use the information from 2 variables and create a new one with it?

[marysmith]

Dear SAS Community.

I need your help with this. I have 2 Character Variables "Auftraggeber" and "Manufacturer" and want to create a new Variable "Sponsor" with the information from those variables. The information from the variable "Auftraggeber" is the information I need, but there are a lot of missings in this variable. So if there is a missing in the variable "Auftraggeber" , I want SAS to take the Information from the variable "Manufacturer" then. How can I do this?

Thank you for your help 🙂

I tried something like

data work.sponsors;
 set work.sponsors;
 sponsor = Auftraggeber;
 if Auftraggeber ne . then sponsor = Auftraggeber;
 if Auftraggeber = . then sponsor = Manufacturer;
 run;

[GinaRepole · Accepted solution]

You've very nearly solved this one already! The main issue here is that you're comparing a character variable to the numeric missing value. What you really want is a comparison using " " as your missing value. Here's a small re-write you can use, and since you've already set sponsor to Auftraggeber upfront, the only time you need to worry about Manufacturer is if that value was missing.

data work.sponsors;
     set work.sponsors;
     sponsor = Auftraggeber;
     if Auftraggeber eq " " then sponsor = Manufacturer;
run;

[marysmith]

Thank you!!!!

[andreas_lds]

Depending on the type of the variable you need to check . or " " (single, quoted blank). I recommend using the function missing(variable) to find missing values.

data work.sponsors;
   set work.sponsors;
   
   if missing(Auftraggeber) then do;
      sponsor = Auftraggeber;
   end;
   else do;
      sponsor = Manufacturer;
   end;
run;

You do have interesting variable names, if you don't want to translate var names, check out the regional groups.

[marysmith]

Thank you!!!!!!