Converting Names into Number

[brownster]

I am trying to convert all last names of a patient to the number 0. Writing out each last name is not realistic as I have over 2 million last names. Is there a way to do this? I am trying to recode names present to 0 and missing to 1. 

[PaigeMiller · Accepted solution]

If I am understanding you properly

newvariable = missing(last_name);

[ballardw]

If you want to do something like missing nonmissing you do not need to convert anything.

In a data step

MissingName = missing(yournamevariable);

will create a new variable named MissingName and if the variable is missing, i.e. blank, then will be assigned the value of 1 and 0 otherwise. Missing is one of the functions that works with both character and numeric variables.

If you want to overwrite the value in the name then you convert the result to text using the PUt function

name = put(missing(name),1. );

The format 1. means just use one character for the result so  the value will be in the first column of the name variable.