Could someone tell me the difference between Keep and Retain statements for SAS?
Thanks!
keeps refers to the variable beeing read or written in the dataset
retain stores the value of a variable between observations, it surpresses reseting of the variable
In addition ot @chrej5am, Keep (and Drop) can be a data set option and used anywhere a dataset is used to restrict the variables used by a procedure. Retain is only valid in a data step.
Adding to what @chrej5am said, retain works reliably only with newly created variables. Variables that are already present in the input dataset(s) will be overwritten anytime a new observation is read.
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