Need to Loop Through 36 Character Variables & Create Six New Hierarchical Variables

[cgates]

Using SAS EG 7.15 HF9 (7.100.5.6226) (64-bit) on a Windows 10 computer.

I have 12 variables that are each Yes/No. Each variable represents a job a person reported to have. They can report more than one job. What I need to do is loop through all 12 Y/N variables and determine which ones have "Yes" values. Then, for the "Yes" jobs I need to pull on each one's name and address fields and populate that in new variables for up to 3 jobs, two fields each: WORKNAME1, WORKADD1, WORKNAME2, WORKADD2, WORKNAME3,WORKADD3.  To add more complexity since a person can report up to 12 jobs but we can only accept three, there is a hierarchy to determine which to bring in e.g. If they reported to have jobs in retail, government, healthcare, and teaching I should only take the teaching, healthcare and government jobs.

I've racked my brain and I can't think of an efficient solution to this. I'm sure I should use some sort of looping method but I've never done a loop like this. Any help is appreciate. Thank you!

Data I have:

WORKRETAIL

WORKRETAILNAME

WORKRETAILADD

WORKGOV

WORKGOVNAME

WORKGOVADD

WORKTEACH

WORKTEACHNAME

WORKTEACHADD

WORKHEALTH

WORKHEALTHNAME

WORKHEALTHADD

WORKOTHER

WORKOTHERNAME

WORKOTHERADD

Yes

Salon

123 ABC St, California

Yes

Agency

123 ABC St, California

Yes

Elementary

123 ABC St, California

Yes

Hospital

123 ABC St, California

No

Data I need:

WORKNAME1	WORKADD2	WORKNAME2	WORKADD2	WORKNAME3	WORKADD3
Agency	123 ABC St, California	Elementary	123 ABC St, California	Hospital	123 ABC St, California

[RichardDeVen · Accepted solution]

Use variable arrays for searching for yes/no and retrieving corresponding address.

* list the variables in order of importance;
array flags WORKGOV     WORKTEACH     WORKHEALTH     WORKRETAIL     WORKOTHER;
array names WORKGOVNAME WORKTEACHNAME WORKHEALTHNAME WORKRETAILNAME WORKOTHERNAME;
array addrs WORKGOVADD  WORKTEACHADD  WORKHEALTHADD  WORKRETAILADD  WORKOTHERADD;

array workname(3) $50;
array workadd(3) $100;

index2 = 0;
do index = 1 to dim(flags) while(index2<3);
  if flags(index) eq 'No' then continue;
  index2+1;
  workname(index2) = names(index);
  workadd(index2) = addrs(index);
end;

[cgates]

You're a godsend @RichardDeVen . Thank you so much! It worked perfectly.