Renaming in data step not working

[MerAgSo]

Hello everybody

I have existing dataset covid which has space in variables name like below: 

numero expediente del paciente 

I tried renaming them assuming SAS would turn spaces into underscores but when I run the program it sends a warning that the variable does not exist in the dataset. I have run PROC CONTENTS and the variables are there, but the variable name appears without underscores. The original data came from an excel file but I changed it into SAS data.

Here's the code: 

libname COVIDBD '/home/mercedesaguilars0/sasuser.v94/SASMer';

data base;
set covidbd.covid;
run;

NOTE: There were 398 observations read from the data set COVIDBD.COVID.

NOTE: The data set WORK.BASE has 398 observations and 199 variables.

data base2;
set base
(rename=(numero_expediente_del_paciente=numexp)); 

run; 

Variable numero_expediente_del_paciente is not on file WORK.BASE2

Thank you

[mkeintz]

You need to use what SAS calls a "name literal".

Just as

1. A number, say like 5, is a numeric literal   (as in X=5).
2. A quoted string is a character literal   (as in Y='This is a string')
3. A  '.....'d is a date literal   (renew_date='25Aug2021'd)
4. '....'t is a time literal   (lunch_time='13:00:00't)
5. '...'dt is a datetime literal

There are some others too (hexadecimal literals come to mind).

But you need to use a name literal, expressed as 'this is a variable name'n.  So in your example, you probably should use

set base
(rename=('numero expediente del paciente'n=numexp)); 

SAS does NOT replace blanks in a name with underscores.

[SASKiwi]

If your variable names contain spaces then you will probably need to do something like this:

data base2;
set base
(rename=('numero expediente del paciente'n = numexp)); 
run; 

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

Set this option and reimport your data to avoid the issue entirely.

options validvarname = v7;

If you have this option set, when you import data SAS will automatically add the underscores to the variable names as necessary.

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@MerAgSo wrote:

Hello everybody

I have existing dataset covid which has space in variables name like below: 

numero expediente del paciente 

I tried renaming them assuming SAS would turn spaces into underscores but when I run the program it sends a warning that the variable does not exist in the dataset. I have run PROC CONTENTS and the variables are there, but the variable name appears without underscores. The original data came from an excel file but I changed it into SAS data.

Here's the code: 

libname COVIDBD '/home/mercedesaguilars0/sasuser.v94/SASMer';

data base;
set covidbd.covid;
run;

NOTE: There were 398 observations read from the data set COVIDBD.COVID.

NOTE: The data set WORK.BASE has 398 observations and 199 variables.

data base2;
set base
(rename=(numero_expediente_del_paciente=numexp)); 

run; 

Variable numero_expediente_del_paciente is not on file WORK.BASE2

Thank you

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