Deleting records with a value not included in a list

[Ihsan-Mahdi]

Hello,

I would like to limit my data set to a specific list of county names. Is there a quicker way than repeated IF statements?

Thanks!

[PeterClemmensen]

Yes. Please specify your problem more carefully and you'll have a usable code answer in no time.

[Ihsan-Mahdi]

So, I'm working with a data set of about 1M records. A variable in the set specifies the county name. I would like to keep only the records in which the county name belongs to a specific list of 39 counties and delete the rest.

I usually use IF statements, IF county_name="so and so" THEN delete. But since there is a long list of count names I wish to delete I was hoping there would be a shorter way.

Thank you!

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

When you want to compare a single variable to a list of values then the IN operator is your tool of choice:

   countyname in ('Thisname' 'Thatname' 'Another name');

Subsetting the data could be done with either a Where statement or dataset option or an IF statement:

Data want;
    set have;
   where countyname not in ('Thisname' 'Thatname' 'Another name');
run;

or

Data want;
    set have;
   if countyname not in ('Thisname' 'Thatname' 'Another name');
run;

If the list you want to keep is shorter then don't use the NOT in the above examples.

The IN operator for character values is equivalent to a bunch of equals, so if you have case differences such as your values with "Name"  "name" "nAme" etc, for spelling you will need to address that somehow.

[Ihsan-Mahdi]

Thank you so much!