WARNING: The variable in the DROP, KEEP, or RENAME list has never been referenced

[dr2014]

Hi, I had created a new variable (newid) in dataset 'A' by using concatenating 2 or more fields( which I later deleted from the dataset)

This is how dataset A looks:

oldid	sortid	newid	Othervariable1	Othervariable2	Othervariable3
34	1	A0101E
56	2	A0102E
78	3	A0102E

I need to use the newid in dataset A to merge it with dataset B . It will be merged by variable oldid. This is how dataset B looks:

Oldid	othervariables...
34	xxx
34	xxx
56	xxx
56	xxxx
78	xxxx
78	xxx
37	xx
37	xx
48	xx
48	xx

I need to have a final dataset that looks like this ;

Oldid	sortid	newid
34	1	A0101E
34	1	A0101E
56	2	A0102E
56	2	A0102E
78	3	A0102E
78	3	A0102E
37	.
37	.
48	.
48	..

For the merge ,I need only  the oldid , sortind and newid from dataset A, so I created  a dataset called temp:

data temp (keep=oldid sortind newid);

set A;

run;

It gives me a warning saying ...WARNING: The variable newid in the DROP, KEEP, or RENAME list has never been referenced ...and the dataset temp has no variable newid.

Could anyone tell me why its doing that?

Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Thanks!

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

I would double check spelling of the variable. Another possibility is that all values of newid are missing.

A proc sql solution that doesn't require a separate subsetting step.

proc sql;

     create table temp as

     select b.oldid, a.sortid, a.newid

     from b left join a on b.oldid=a.oldid;

quit;

[dr2014]

Thanks @ballardw I will work on your suggestions and use the left join...(The 'sortid/sortind' was a typo error here)