The SAS documentation has the technical requirements and limitations for variable names (number of characters, beginning characters, length, etc.), but I suspect that is not what you are asking about.
SAS, per se, does not have any Coding and Naming standards. Some books have proposed best practices, but it is pretty much left to each organization to establish (or not) their own.
Have a question regarding the length of the program and its affects in CPU time.
I have a very old program which is of 100 lines and without any coding standards (it was all mess). I have modified the code with respect to coding standards, which brought the program upto 400 lines approx.
Question: Does that affect the run time of the program, meaning does it increase CPU time. I personally think it would not affect.
Not necessarily. The program written without standards may have been written very efficiently in terms of CPU and I/O time, but not efficiently in terms of program maintenance or portability.
The only way to know is to run both programs under various conditions.
I have a friend who writes very obscure SAS code, but it runs like greased lightning. He knows the way the SAS statements and programs run AND how to take the most advantage of his hardware platform.
Hi SBB - Yeah I would like to open a new thread, but when I did a search with a keyword, I found this thread with related/familier subject, hence I posted it here.