What does put variable-name=@ statement do?

[mduarte]

In the example given here: http://support.sas.com/kb/24/651.html, what does the following statement do?

  put month_name= @;

[moorsd · Accepted solution]

The trailing @ in the put statement holds the pointer and stops is going to a new line. So in the case in the example in http://support.sas.com/kb/24/651.html the next 'put' statement is written to the same output line to keep all in a row.

This is probably best shown by example:

The original code and output is as follows:

data _null_;

  input date :mmddyy8.;

  /* Create a new variable */

  month_name=PUT(date,monname.);

  put month_name= @;

  /* or just format the date */

  put @25 date @35 date monname.;

datalines;

01/15/04

02/29/04

07/04/04

08/18/04

12/31/04

;

The output to the log is:

month_name=January      16085       January

month_name=February     16130      February

month_name=July         16256          July

month_name=August       16301        August

month_name=December     16436      December

If you remove the trailing '@' from the first 'put' statement using the code below, you'll see how the output differs:

data _null_;

  input date :mmddyy8.;

  /* Create a new variable */

  month_name=PUT(date,monname.);

  put month_name= ;

  /* or just format the date */

  put @25 date @35 date monname.;

datalines;

01/15/04

02/29/04

07/04/04

08/18/04

12/31/04

;

month_name=January

                        16085       January

month_name=February

                        16130      February

month_name=July

                        16256          July

month_name=August

                        16301        August

month_name=December

                        16436      December

The following will probably explain it better?

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a000161869.htm

Does this help?

regards

David