Eliminate a categorical group from a variable

[AnaVelloso]

Hello, 

I am very new and green to SAS and I am sure that I just not writing something correctly. I have a data set where one of the variables is called status (survived vs perished). I want to select only the ones that survived which I am coding in the following way:

data survived;

set birds;

if status = perished then delete;

proc print data= survived; 

run;

Once I do that keeps printing all the data without deleting the ones that perished. Can someone help me please? 

[PGStats]

You probally need to quote the value to make it a string constant and not a variable name

data survived;
set birds;
if status = "perished" then delete;
run;

proc print data= survived; 
run;

[Astounding · Accepted solution]

Other things to note:

Capitalization matters. These are all different:

Perished
PERISHED
perished

You don't need a data step to print a subset. This is a valid approach:

proc print data=birds;
where status="perished";
run;

[AnaVelloso]

That was my problem! thanks so much!