Delete works by accident here - by the time you hit it, you're already on the fourth iteration of the datastep and so the required records have already been output. So it deletes the non existent record... and as you're at end of file, the datastep terminates. ... View more

Your problem is that you're mixing up numeric and character data. And SAS' automatic conversions are trying to help. By saying it deletes when variable = '  ', this means variable is character. So comparing to 0 forces an automatic conversion to numeric. (check the warnings in the log)... So you need to use the following delete statement if put(variable,5.) < 0 and put(variable,5.) ne . then delete.  SAS will still complain about invalid numeric data, but your tests will work correctly. Use an appropriate numeric format instead of the 5. if that's not appropriate. ... View more