DO Loops

[advoss]

I like Flip's straightforward nonmacro approach, partly because I often use similar code. Yes, it can be done with a macro, but why make it so difficult?

[Flip]

A random thought:

I have been developing in SAS for 25 years. Now I did more Oracle forms work around the time that V9 came out so I got a bit rusty. At any rate, in the past programmers would always try everything before diving into a macro. I knew programmers with 5 to 10 years of experience who would not put two & together.

Now it seems that people are trying a complex macro as their first SAS programming attempt. It seems like the large number of programming examples available lead people to try to modify things they do not really understand. Don't get me wrong, I love macro programming. I had an application in production for over a decade with 45 macro conditional and looping statements in one line of SAS code. The point is, the simple solluton is often much easier to maintain and more efficient.
If you are new to SAS, try simple first.

[deleted_user]

Thanks flip and everyone, for your feedback, This discussion group has been most useful. Sometimes learning SAS is overwhelming and hard to grasp until you're faced with a real-world project. Not thru a book.