How to populate the intermittent blank spaces with the last available non-zero value ??

[Starsagitarian]

Hello all,

My name is Baiju Joseph and I am a student.

I encountered a problem while doing a project, which I would like to share with you all

for a variable Base in a dataset following was the pattern:

Base
9
6
6
.
.
.
.
.
.
6
6
3
3
.
.
.
.
7
9
3

Now for all the null values I would like to put the preceding non zero value in it till I reach the next non zero value in the variable and so on and so forth, until there are no null values in the variable. for example Observations 4-9 are null, and hence I would like to fill in the value of the preceding non zero observation (ie Obs 3 with value 6) in all the observations till I reach Obs 10, which is a non zero observation.

what can be done to achieve this ??

Kindly reply back with your answers

Thank you all !!!

[RW9]

Hi,

There are several ways to do this, first one that springs to mind for me is a retain:

data want;

     set have;

     retain lstval;

     if base ne . then lstval=base;

     else base=lstval;

run;

There are other suggestions if you search the forums.