Hi ballardw and Art, Many thanks. Hi Art, What you have suggested works. Thanks. I would like to ask your help to learn another aspect from your code. data need; set have (rename=(Days_Past=_Days_Past)); Days_Past=input(_Days_Past, ?? 12.); run; Above code performs sequentially what I have shown below: 1). It takes the character variable named Days_Past from work.have and renames it to _Days_Past 2). Then the _Days_Past variable is converted into a numeric variable and gives the name Days_Past double question mark (??) modifier suppresses the printing of both the error messages and the input lines when invalid data values are read. Am I correct? Question: How come then the following code does the job differently (I have explained the sequence after the below code). data work.want (rename = (N_VAR1= VAR1 N_VAR2 = VAR2 N_VAR3 = VAR3)); set work.have ; N_VAR1 = input(VAR1, 8.); N_VAR2 = input (VAR2,8.); N_VAR3 = input (VAR3, 8.); drop VAR1 VAR2 VAR3 ; run; 1). First, it takes 3 character variables named VAR1, VAR2 and VAR3 from work.have dataset and then converts each one of them into numeric variables giving names N_VAR1, N_VAR2 and N_VAR3 respectively. Whereas in your code, renaming was done first. How in the second code variable conversion happend first? 2). Then drops 3 character variables named VAR1, VAR2 and VAR3 3). Then it gets 3 numeric variables named N_VAR1, N_VAR2 and N_VAR3, and then renames them back into VAR1, VAR2 and VAR3 Is this correct? Could you please help me to understand this differential behavior of seemingly same two codes. Thanks M.
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