How can I filter rows using a string I input in datalines?

[icrandell]

I'm writing a macro to allow a user to select a subset of columns in a data table by name and then produce summaries appropriate to the type of the data in the column. The first step is to create a data set with the appropriate names to control a call execute routine. It looks like the following:

data varData;
length varnames $20 vardisplays $20;
infile datalines dlm = ",";
input varnames $ vardisplays $;
datalines;
sodium, Sodium (Na)
;

Here, varnames will be the names of the columns in the data set to summarize and vardisplays will be a (possibly long) string to describe the variable. But, I have the following issue:

proc sql;
	select * from varData where varnames = "sodium";
quit;

This does not return any rows, even though there's a clearly a "sodium" in the varnames column. This is a problem, because I'll later need to join this data table with sashelp.vcolumn to get the data type of the column in question. What am I doing wrong here? I'm running sas studio version 3.8 and sas version 9.4.

[Reeza]

Show a query that does work? Is it 'sodium' or 'Sodium', character comparisons are case sensitive.

[icrandell]

I literally copy pasted the string I input in the datalines step into the proc sql. The cases are the same. I would love to write down a query that works but apparently I don't know what data I put into my own data table.

If I remove the where clause and just select everything, it shows me a table which looks exactly like the one I input. I can then copy the field "sodium" directly from that table into the where clause and still get nothing. it's as if SAS is storing my text data in some form which is both different from what it's showing me and different from what I gave it.

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

Your code works for me. I ran it without modification, and the SQL returned one line, as expected.

[icrandell]

Well now that is extremely frustrating. I went and ran the same code on the desktop version and it also worked as expected. Thanks for letting me know it worked for you, I wouldn't have thought the issue could be of this nature.

So, looks like the problem is with sas studio. I guess I'll post this on the sas studio forum. 

Thanks everyone! Working with sas is always so fun.