SORTING

[robertrao]

when we have a charecter variable which has values like shown below:

0,1,2,3,4, MISSING(word)

HOW DOES IT SORT??????

i am getting the followwing order:

0

1

2

3

4

MISSING

Is there any way we can do :

MISSING

0

1

2

3

4

Thanks

[Fugue]

What technique are you using to perform the sort? PROC SORT? PROC SQL? Something else? What platform are you running SAS on?

[robertrao]

I was trying to acheive this in PROC REPORT...

Thanks

[Fugue]

The quickest way would be to recode the variable to numeric.

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

You can specify a COLLATING SEQUENCE in proc sort that would do that. But you will have to make it.

Or a translation table Proc Trantab gets you started.

Personally, I wouldn't have made them character if I wan'ted them to sort that way as Missing, as a numeric, comes first, especially if all the values concerned except MISSING are number values. Then us a FORMAT to display the text if that's important.