Concatenating Variables and Retain Order of Newly Concatenated Variable

[cbourne090]

Hello SAS Community,

I am attempting to concatenate two variables, however, I would like to always retain the order of the two variables that I am concatenating because I would like to also create a table that summarizes the concatenated variables (sometimes the order is reversed [i.e. pair1,pair2 is also pair2,pair1]), but I would like to count it as 1 (irrespective of the order of the concatenated variable). Please see the sample data and what I am trying to accomplish below. I hope this makes sense. Any help is greatly appreciated!

SAS CODE TO CONCATENATE:

data data1;

set mydata;

cat_pair=catx(',',pair_a,pair_b);

run;

[ChrisNZ]

Like this?

proc sql;
   select catx(',', A, B) as PAIR, count(*) as COUNT from HAVE group by 1;

[Reeza · Accepted solution]

data data1;
set mydata;
call sortc(pair_a, pair_b);
cat_pair=catx(',',pair_a,pair_b);
run;

proc freq data=data1;
table cat_pair / out = want;;
run;
 
proc print data=want;run;

Sort your variables ahead of time. 

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@cbourne090 wrote:

Hello SAS Community,

I am attempting to concatenate two variables, however, I would like to always retain the order of the two variables that I am concatenating because I would like to also create a table that summarizes the concatenated variables (sometimes the order is reversed [i.e. pair1,pair2 is also pair2,pair1]), but I would like to count it as 1 (irrespective of the order of the concatenated variable). Please see the sample data and what I am trying to accomplish below. I hope this makes sense. Any help is greatly appreciated!

SAS CODE TO CONCATENATE:

data data1;

set mydata;

cat_pair=catx(',',pair_a,pair_b);

run;

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