colon wildcard

[anming]

colon means "begin with " in the wild card, such as,

data ABCD;

set EF: ;      /* a dataset name stats with EF, like EF11.

Drop TEMP: ; to drop any variables starting with TEMP.

Total = sum (of var:); all variables with "var" in the name.

Arry col(*) col: ;

Anything else?

[novinosrin · Accepted solution]

Hi @anming  You may have come across this interesting technical paper that is worth reading -

However just in case- That Mysterious Colon (:) 

https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings/proceedings/sugi26/p073-26.pdf

[PaigeMiller]

If x=: 'ABC' then ...

If the value of x starts with the letters ABC then this is true and the THEN clause is executed.