Issues with creating group blocks with Proc Boxplot

[denserro]

I have been having issues with creating block groups in proc boxplot.

i.e. The example when I try to perform the following:

proc boxplot;

plot y*male (group);

run;

I keep getting an error message that the data is not properly sorted.  

NOTE: Processing beginning for PLOT statement number 1.
ERROR: The values of the group variable male are not sorted in increasing order in the data set
POOLED.
NOTE: Recommended practice is to sort the data by the group variable (within BY groups if any)
with PROC SORT.
NOTE: The SAS System stopped processing this step because of errors.
NOTE: There were 3432 observations read from the data set WORK.POOLED.
NOTE: PROCEDURE BOXPLOT used (Total process time):
real time 0.03 seconds
cpu time 0.03 seconds

However, when I do attempt to sort the data in the following way, it does not work.

proc sort; by group male; 

This also does not work.

proc sort; by male group;

The odd thing is that this method DOES work on one dataset I have but not another one.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

[Reeza]

You never reference data in either of your procs? Can you please post your full code. It should be something like the following:

proc sort DATA=HAVE;
by male group;
run;

proc boxplot data=HAVE;
...

run;

[ballardw]

---

@denserro wrote:

However, when I do attempt to sort the data in the following way, it does not work.

proc sort; by group male; 

This also does not work.

proc sort; by male group;

The odd thing is that this method DOES work on one dataset I have but not another one.

Has anyone else experienced this issue?

---

Please describe how or what doesn't work. Do you get an error message from the sort, post the error.

When you do not explicitly list the name fo the data set to be used the last created data set is used in procs. You might be attempting to sort a data set other than the one used for the boxplot procedure or plotting a set other than the sorted one.