re: Dealing with missing entries

[twildone]

Hi, Is there a way to ensure that missing entries for character fields have blanks and missing entries for numeric fields have the decimal point when importing data and when working datsets. Thanks.

data ListFinal;
   set ListFinal;
   array NumVar _numeric_;
   do over NumVar;
      if NumVar < 0 and NumVar not in (.) then NumVar=.;
   end;
run;

data ListFinal;
   set ListFinal;
   array CharVar _character_;
   do over CharVar;
      if CharVar in ('.',''," ",' ') then CharVar='';
   end;
run;

[yabwon]

Hi @twildone ,

Do you mean situation where you have data already in sas dataset, or when you are reading from a text file?

Btw. in case of text variables: 

" " = "" = '' = ' '

All the best;

Bart

PS you can do your code in 1 datastep (one data read/write):

data ListFinal;
   set ListFinal;
   array NumVar _numeric_;
   array CharVar _character_;

   do over NumVar;
      if not (NumVar > .z) then NumVar=.;
   end;
   do over CharVar;
      if CharVar in ('.',' ') then CharVar='';
   end;
   /* what about this case: '  .' ?*/
run;

[twildone]

Hi...when I am reading in from a text file....thanks

[yabwon]

Hi, do you have any small example?
Bart