Choosing Three Earliest Dates

[blackmetal]

Hello SAS community,

I have the dataset below:

id    term    med            start             

1     1          w             20090110         

1     1          x              20060324      

1     1          y              20070704       

1     1          z              20081124         

1     2          w              20090110           

1     2          x              20080324        

1     2          y              20070704       

1     2          z              20061124    

2     ....         

2          

2          

What I want to do is pick the earliest three start dates for each id-term pair. 

id    term    med            start 

1     1          x              20060324      

1     1          y              20070704       

1     1          z              20081124   

1     2          x              20080324        

1     2          y              20070704       

1     2          z              20061124 

2    ....

2

2

I am not sure how to choose these dates using SAS Proc SQL and would appreciate your help.  Thank you. 

[gergely_batho]

proc rank data=have out=want(where=(start_rank<=3));

     var start;

     ranks start_rank;

     by id term;

run;

[Steelers_In_DC]

Here's another solutions:

data have;

infile cards;

input id    term    med$            start;

cards;

1     1          w             20090110

1     1          x             20060324

1     1          y             20070704

1     1          z             20081124

1     2          w             20090110

1     2          x             20080324

1     2          y             20070704

1     2          z             20061124

;

data all want(drop=count);

set have;

by id term;

count + 1;

if first.id then count = 1;

if first.term then count = 1;

output all;

if count < 4 then output want;

run;

[MadhuKorni · Accepted solution]

proc sort data = have;

by id term start;

data want;

set have;

retain cnt ;

if first.id or first.term then cnt = 1;

else cnt+1;

by id term;

if cnt le 3;

drop cnt;

run;