Patrick
By the way,
I did some research and I found a way to delete an existing hash table before loading in new information to the same-named hash. For each new member of a BY group, the hash can be deleted in the following manner:
if first.JournalTitle and _n_ ne 1 then do;
h.delete();
h.=_new_ hash;
...
end;
Basically, for a hash object h defined in a previous section in the same DATA step, a new hash table can be created per each new value of JournalTitle, which removes the possibility of any memory issues arising from utilizing the same hash reference without doing the clearing out of the prior information.
Still working on loading the new data so I won't be able to revisit the test code until later.
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