Rename and re-position variables on same row - Proc Transpose

[Q1983]

I am unable to replicate this in a test dataset however please look at this. have is a proc transpose. Notice the cascading variables that end in PCT. Is there a way to rename the four in _NAME_ to something like Stay_Curr and let all entries appear on the same row in order as seen in the want-proc transpose (or some other routine)?? have - proc transpose Group Category _NAME_ DEC20 JAN21 FEB21 MAR21 APR21 Current Count Count_ 736422 730405 722577 721558 704774 Current Count _04_Stay_Pct 0.94515373 1 1 1 1 Current Count _03_Stay_Pct 1 0.951110685 1 1 1 Current Count _02_Stay_Pct 1 1 0.951131852 1 1 Current Count _01_Stay_Pct 1 1 1 0.95324423 1 Current Count _00_Stay_Pct 1 1 1 1 0.956489598 want-proc transpose Group Category _NAME_ DEC20 JAN21 FEB21 MAR21 APR21 Current Count Count_ 736422 730405 722577 721558 704774 Current Count Stay_Curr_Pct 0.94515373 0.951110685 0.951131852 0.95324423 0.956489598

[Reeza]

Unfortunately your question is garbled enough to not be legible at this point.
Can you please edit it?

Please show what you've tried as well.

[ballardw]

Order of variables in a data set is one of the lowest priority things I can think of doing though apparently many people seem to think it is needed. Anything done inside SAS basically does not care.

If a file you are sending to an output file needs a specific order then create that file at that time.

Otherwise you can spend a lot of time fooling around with (ever changing) minutia that actually wastes time and makes code hard to follow.

So, why is a specific order of variables/ variable names needed?

You already likely have too many variables with data in the names, Mon and Year for example. and your "Count_00" "Count_01" are agravating that for most actual processing/analysis.

[mkeintz]

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@ballardw wrote:

Order of variables in a data set is one of the lowest priority things I can think of doing though apparently many people seem to think it is needed. Anything done inside SAS basically does not care.

If a file you are sending to an output file needs a specific order then create that file at that time.

Otherwise you can spend a lot of time fooling around with (ever changing) minutia that actually wastes time and makes code hard to follow.

So, why is a specific order of variables/ variable names needed?

I can think of a few activities I commonly do in which knowing/using variable order is "needed":

1. When displaying the data
2. Expecting the identifier variables (id/date/time/...) to consistently be in a particular position
3. Variable clusters - i.e.   6 groups of 5 attributes arranged contiguously

True, the above are for looking at the data, not programming.  But I often take advantage of variable order in programming as well, mostly through use of the double dash as a means of generating a list of variable names or array declarations, typically to avoid listing lots of variable names.

Or it can also be useful when I might not actually know the variable names of interest.  For example: let's say that I want to interleave A and B, but keep only the variables present in dataset A:

data want ;
  if 0 then set a;
  retain _sentinel1 .;
  if 0 then set b;
  retain _sentinel2 .;
  set a b;
  by id;
  drop _sentinel1--_sentinel2;
run;

Yes, this can be done directly in SQL, but there are often many reasons to use a data step instead.