converting character values to numeric values with informat statement

[sra2131]

Hi,

I'll preface this by saying that I am new to macros.  I want to use them because I am working with a sas data set that has over 100 variables, and roughly 40 of them have Yes/No values that I need to convert.  I want to convert these Yes/No values to 0/1 values, and I'm having a lot of trouble getting the informat to work.  I've created a macro variable (&YesNovars) that contains all of the variables I want to convert.  The data step below runs without error, but when I look at the data, nothing has changed.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

Here is what I've tried:

proc format library=library;

   invalue $yesno 'Y'='1'

                 'N'='0'

                      ;

run;

data bicc.maternal12;

set bicc.maternal10;

attrib &YesNovars informat=$yesno.;

run;

Thanks!

[Haikuo · Accepted solution]

Informat does not work on SAS tables like that, as they already have their informat and format. Try use Array() to simply your task:

data have;

A='Y'; B='N';run;

data want;

  set have;

  array t a--b;

  do over t;

  if t='Y' then t='1'; else if t='N' then t='0';

  end;

run;

Haikuo

update: if you intend to use the existing macro variable (which I believe you don't have to), replace a--b with &YesNovars.

[sra2131]

It worked! Thank you!

[Tom]

If you want to convert the character variables with Y/N to numeric variables with 1/0 then you will need to give them new names.

data want ;

set have;

array _ch &yesnovars ;

array _num &binaryvars;

do i=1 to dim(_ch);

  if _ch(i)='Y' then _num(i)=1;

  else if _ch(i)='N' then _num(i)=0;

  else _num(i)=.;

end;

run;

[Hyoun]

Thank you, Tom.

It really helps