proc summary for duplicate values

[BrahmanandaRao]

Hi Guys,

how to remove duplicate values using proc summary and proc tabulate give example 

[PeterClemmensen]

Why do you want to use either of those to remove duplicates in your data?

[BrahmanandaRao]

for best practice

[Kurt_Bremser]

Best practice is to use PROC SORT with NODUPKEY, a DATA step with FIRST. or LAST., or SQL with DISTINCT, depending on your data structure and the details of your needs.

(PS if that was an interviewer's question, he/she wants the above as answer; the fact that you even think about trying such stupidity during an interview immediately exposes you as a SAS noob).

[ballardw]

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@BrahmanandaRao wrote:

Hi Guys,

how to remove duplicate values using proc summary and proc tabulate give example 

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Proc SUMMARY summarizes numeric values and could be done so for groups of BY or Class variables. Not really removing duplicates.

Proc tabulate by default creates a report for people to read and removes nothing and the output data sets created by Proc tabulate are structured quite a bit differently than you might expect, not a good tool for "removing duplicates" in my opinion but useful for certain restructuring issues. Additionally since Proc Tabulate can have multiple Table descriptions in a single procedure the output data set can be quite complicated.

So a very explicit detailed example of starting data and desired result are needed to properly answer a question.

[BrahmanandaRao]

https://communities.sas.com/t5/General-SAS-Programming/6-ways-of-removing-duplicate/td-p/124984