Trouble performin operation on the colums starting with specific characters

[cieffegi]

Hallo,
I have a table wich contains 50 colums, 30 of which have a name which start with "ID_03_".
I would like to perform some operations only on the columns with these initial characters.
Ideally, the program wold scan the names of the colums and do 
"if the name starst then "ID_03_" perform something, otherwise skip to the next column".

is it possibile?
Thank you

[PaigeMiller]

You haven't really said what you want to do to these columns, so I can't give you specific instructions, but perhaps a DATA step ARRAY might be useful.

Example:

data want;
    set have;
    array x id_03_:;
    do i=1 to dim(x);
         x(i)=x(i)+1; /* Do something to these columns; in this example I add 1 to the value in each column */
    end;
    drop i;
run;

[TSR]

/* Using sashelp.mon111 which contains prefixed varnames.   

   All variables are numeric so example multiplies original by 2 .

   Select S6 as prefix where mon111 has 10 S6 variables. */

proc contents data=sashelp.mon111;  /* explore table */

run;

proc sql;        /* Create macro variable series of vars */

   select name

into :var1-

from sashelp.vcolumn

where libname='SASHELP' and memname='MON111' and name like 'S6%';

quit;

%put NOTE: &=sqlobs;

%macro x;

data work.test;

   set sashelp.mon111;

   %do i = 1 %to &sqlobs;

       new_&&var&i = &&var&i * 2;  /* e.g., create a new variable twice value of original */

   %end;

run;

proc print;

   var %do i=1 %to &sqlobs; 

          &&var&i new_&&var&i

       %end;;

run;

%mend x;

%x

Partial output, 3 of 10 variable pairs