make loop to perfom operation on all lines of all columns

[Nasser_DRMCP]

Hello,

I've got a table (generated by proc compare) that holds around 170 columns and 150 000 rows.

for all lines and all columns, I would like to perform the same operation. for example replace '.' by ' ' ;

thanks a lot in advance for your help

regards

Nasser

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

For numeric variables, you can't do that.  A missing value for a numeric variable is displayed as a dot.  The only thing you can do differently is to change how it gets displayed:

options missing=" ";

If you happen to have character variables that contain a dot, you can change them to blanks:

data want;
   set have;
   array chars {*} _character_;
   do _n_= 1 to dim(chars);
      if chars{_n_} = "." then chars{_n_} = " ";
   end;
run;