Basic question about OR in a WHERE-statement

[EinarRoed]

For a where-statement, where I need to extract entries from three different months, should it work to use this?

&last_updated_month" EQ "&month1" | "month2" | "&month3"

Or, must I use this more convoluted version?

     (&last_updated_month" EQ "&month1") OR (&last_updated_month" EQ "month2") OR (&last_updated_month" EQ"&month3")

Sorry about the simple case question, but I don't have access to a historical data set to test it on now.

Thanks.

[Patrick_Tan]

Where is the WHERE used?

In a datastep, procs sql, other proc?

As a statement or dataset option?

[MarkJones · Accepted solution]

A simple way to do this (subject to the answer to Patrick's question) is to use the IN operator:

WHERE &last_updated_month IN ("&month1", "month2", "&month3")

which should boil down to doing exactly the same as your second syntax suggestion.  The first suggestion whilst it would be nice is not supported in SAS data steps