Let us try to understand by an example similar to yours   data a; input profile_number sas_id date:date9.; format date date9.; datalines; 123 345 23SEP1974 123 228 24SEP1974 123 607 25SEP1974 224 601 22SEP1974 224 601 30SEP1974 ;   After creating dataset you run the below query   proc sql; create table abcs as select profile_number, sas_id, min(date) as mindate format=Date9. from a group by profile_number; quit;   what this does is create min date with each group and remerges within that group as you see this note   NOTE: The query requires remerging summary statistics back with the original data. resultant dataset is below (min date for 123 profile_id is 23sep1974 and is repeated within that group) profile_number sas_id mindate 123 607 23SEP1974 123 345 23SEP1974 123 228 23SEP1974 224 601 22SEP1974 224 601 22SEP1974   if you see above last 2 row are same and when you apply distinct only one will be left out. In this step distinct is applied after  group by and gives result as shown below.   profile_number sas_id mindate 123 228 23SEP1974 123 345 23SEP1974 123 607 23SEP1974 224 601 22SEP1974   query for distinct is below proc sql; create table abc as select distinct profile_number, sas_id, min(date) as mindate format=Date9. from a group by profile_number; quit;       hope this example makes it clear.   ... View more

for that your solution will work. you can also try this PRXMATCH("m/^died$|^alive$/i", trim(a)) > 0 ... View more

oh I think i did not read your question well. you want those words in the begining.   ^died\s*$|^alive\s*$/i. this will not catch if your variable value is like  "alive is good".  It can search for your find word with no space, single space or multiple spaces     if you try the below one just in case to be safe aand this takes care of your word at beginning+space after that+ any other other word(may or may not be there) PRXMATCH("m/^died\s+.*|^alive\s+.*/i", a) > 0 ... View more

something like this in Regex should work. But what RW9 Suggests is the right way to do as it is much cleaner and very easily mangeable   data a; input a $50.; datalines; alive is the subject alive died died at hospice Nothing happened ; data c; set a; IF PRXMATCH("m/.*died.*|.*alive.*/oi", a) > 0 ; run;   just add any word like .*wordyouwant.* after the pipe i.e. |. Here dot indicates any character and * means it can be there 0 or more times.     see this link for more explanation   http://support.sas.com/kb/38/719.html ... View more