decompressing data

[tebert]

I have a data set.

Variable1    Variable2    Variable3    Variable4

3                   5                   6                     4

5                   7                   8                     2

I want SAS to read Variable4 and make that many copies of the data. So the above would be converted to:

Variable1    Variable2    Variable3

3                   5                   6

3                   5                   6 

3                   5                   6 

3                   5                   6 

5                   7                   8 

5                   7                   8 

[ballardw · Accepted solution]

data want;
   set have;
   do i = 1 to variable4;
      output;
   end;
   drop i variable4;
run;

Should get you started.

For some purposes you could use variable4 as a FREQ variable, indicating the number of identical records, without creating a new data set. For some others, such as PROC Freq can use variable4 as a WEIGHT variable for the same purpose.

[tebert]

Thank you