Renaming unconventional Variable names

[Danglytics]

Hi,

I've imported data from an Excel spreadsheet and some variable names have spaces characters that SAS doesnt like too much.

In the data step how would i rename these variables?

i've tried

RENAME "VAR ONE" =VAR_ONE ;

or

RENAME "ACCT#" = ACCOUNT_NUMB ;

but that didnt seem to work.

Thanks for your help.

[Patrick · Accepted solution]

In case you used the EG import wizard easiest would be to re-import the Excel and to tick the box in the import wizard saying "rename columns to comply with SAS naming conventions".

Else: The quoting for literals looks like '<varname'n

rename 'VAR ONE'n = VAR_ONE;

[Linlin]

proc datasets library=work nolist;

modify your_dataset;

rename 'var one'n=var_one;

quit;