Hello, all. I am new to SAS but trying to understand the program syntax of some legacy SAS files. This has to do with the rename statement.
The very first lines in the program file look like this:
data mysetname (rename =
field1name = newfield1name
field2name = newfield2name
field3name = newfield3name
this repeats for every field in the table, about 25 fields.
When would/why would you rename every field in a table? These are the very first lines in the program and the first data set. It doesn't look like there's any data transforming or calculations going on, just the renaming of the fields. A best practice method? Whoever wrote it did this each time they were defining a new data set.
Thanks in advance.
Without documentation best guesses:
Without documentation best guesses:
6. Because the boss said to do it that way.
7. Because the data is about to be downloaded to a spreadsheet and those are the column headings that the analyst wants.
8. Didn't know how to use proc datasets to rename variables.
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