Retain with Arrays

[TashaChapman14]

I have a scenario where I have missing data that I would like to fill in with the previous (non-missing) observation.  So, for example my data looks like so:

Obs  FFY2012

1        0.0

2        0.2

3        .

4        0.3

5        0.5

6        0.8

....

And I want to fill in Obs #3 with 0.2 (i.e., the value from Obs #2).  

So I wrote up this code and it works well...

if ffy2012 = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear2012 = 0;
	if ffy2012 ne . then ffyear2012 = ffy2012;
	retain ffyear2012;

 (Open_cit_lag_c = 0 is the first observation, and sometimes this value is missing as well.  Just FYI...)

However, I have 5 such variables that need to be fixed, so I tried to write this up as an array, like so:

array FFY{5} FFY2011 FFY2012 FFY2013 FFY2014 FFY2015;
array FFYEAR{5} FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
do i = 1 to 5;
	if ffy{i} = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear{i} = 0;
	if ffy{i} ne . then ffyear{i} = ffy{i};
	retain ffyear{i};
	end;

And it errored out at the retain statement.  It's early in the morning, so it's possible that I'm missing something small.  But I'm wondering if my use of a retain statement within the array do loop is causing some sort of crossing of streams?  Anywho, any thoughts would help.

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Don't put the RETAIN in the loop, It is not an executable statement.

array FFY FFY2011 FFY2012 FFY2013 FFY2014 FFY2015;
array FFYEAR FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
retain FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015;
do i = 1 to dim(FFY);
  if ffy{i} = . and open_cit_lag_c = 0 then ffyear{i} = 0;
  if ffy{i} ne . then ffyear{i} = ffy{i};
end;

 Note that if you assign initial values in the ARRAY statement then SAS will automatically retain the values.

array FFYEAR FFYEAR2011 FFYEAR2012 FFYEAR2013 FFYEAR2014 FFYEAR2015 (5*.);

[TashaChapman14]

Slick!  That fixed it.  Thanks!