How to fill out blanc fileds with the last value populated

[Aljosa]

Hi all,

I have a column named ID filled out like this (with blancs):

data have;
input ID $;
infile datalines missover;
datalines;
1       
2      
3


4
5       
 
;

I would like to fill out all blancs with the last value populated, so the column I want would look like this:

data want;
input ID $;
infile datalines missover;
datalines;
1       
2
3
3
3
4
5
5
; 

Thank you for your help. Kind regards

[ed_sas_member · Accepted solution]

Hi @Aljosa 

Here is one approach to achieve this:

data want;
	set have;
	retain _ID;
	if not missing(ID) then _ID = ID;
	drop ID;
	rename _ID = ID;
run;

Best,