Sorting by 2nd column

[aviben]

How can I instruct SAS to sort a dataset by a certain column number regrdless of its name?

Thanks

Avirt

[art297]

You can do that easily with proc sql.  e.g.:

proc sql;

  create table want as

    select *

      from sashelp.class

        order by 2

  ;

quit;

[Linlin]

example:

data have;
input (a b c d)(:$2.);
cards;
aa xx cc dd
ab cd ef gr
;
proc sql noprint;
  select name into :vars separated by ' ' from
    dictionary.columns
   where libname='WORK' and memname='HAVE';
quit;

%let i=2;
%let sort=%scan(&vars,&i);
proc sort data=have;
by &sort;
proc print;run;