proc sql and merge in data step / missing variable in output data

[ballardw]

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@Cruise wrote:
But how to figure that out? Is there any clue to tell whether variables left or right justified ?

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The lengths of your two Char variables S and Year were different. Since Year, for most applications seldom exceeds 4 digits (anyone out there working in year 10,000 yet?) it was likely to have a space in the data set where the length was 5.

I would be very tempted to go back in the history and find out why Year is even character to begin with. And if the "reason" is data read with Proc Import a lesson learned about letting guessing approaches (which Proc Format does by looking a few rows of data) control your data.

[Cruise]

You got it. Yes, census file was proc imported. I will use guessingrows=max; next time. right?

[Cruise]

@Patrick

Nothing came out of inner join. 0 observations in the output dataset. I'm doing proc contents and freqs on both dataset variables. I'm baffled.