Anything further on this? ... View more

Hi ballardw,   Thanks a lot for the suggestion.   there was no unique by variable key to identify the records. So I created a unique key and then used modified statement and it worked for me.   Thank you.   Regards, Sheeba ... View more

if looking for base sas solution :   data want(keep = number code); set have; by number; retain code_new; if first.number then code_new = code; else do; if code = code_new then change = "n"; end; if change = 'n'; run; ... View more

That's an excellent interview question.  Particularly for any experienced programmer who puts MACRO on their resume.  It would (could) start an interesting discussion about the costs and benefits of code generation, modularization, etc.   Too many people learn the macro language too soon, and over-use it seeing every problem as having a macro solution.  Or maybe over-use of macro is just a natural step on the learning curve.  When you understand *when* it's appropriate to use macro, and can explain *why* in your judgement macro is appropriate in those contexts, then you're an experienced macro user.   It's not surprising to me that there will be as many different answers to the question as there are programmers.  Lots of folks hate the macro language, or see it as something of limited use which should be avoided as much as possible.  Even among macro enthusiasts, we differ dramatically on our thoughts on the appropriateness of things like : autocall libraries permanent compiled macro libraries macros with no parameters macros with no macro code (i.e. using macros solely for modularlzation, like %include) global macro variables function-style macros etc etc etc   ... View more

@Babloo wrote: Variables RECEIVABLE_START_DATE_SK and RECEIVABLE_END_DATE_SK  has values like -1, 20171212, 20180511...and my client wants me to convert this data which has format YYYY-MM-DD. In order to achieve this, I've applied the format yymmdd10. as I mentioned below, but data is not converting to the format as I thought. What might be the likely cause for the issue? Seems I've to switch to other format or there is an issue with the data as it has value like -1.     data test; set F_PRM_WRITTEN_PREMIUM; format RECEIVABLE_START_DATE_SK RECEIVABLE_END_DATE_SK format yymmdd10.; run;     And reading your original post once more: Your variable names end with _SK. That's a naming convention - at least in SAS data models - often used for Surrogate Key columns. Also a possible value of -1 points to this. If I'm right then you're dealing with a Fact table and there must be somewhere a Dimension table with a name like Date_Dim. -1 in the keys is often used for a default value in case of missing. Find the "Date_Dim" table and then look-up the date over the _SK. If you need only the date then you could also generate a format using "Date_Dim" using _SK as the value and the actual Date column as the label and then just apply this format on the _SK's to get the dates.  ... View more