Apologies - this is a rather basic question although I've spent some time searching and can't seem to find a succinct explanation.   I'm interested in knowing why there is no equivalent to 'calculated' (from Proc SQL) within Data Step syntax? Believe this is down to how the code is compiled and processed, Proc SQL being simultaneous and SAS data step being sequential? Does this then mean that when using a 'Where' clause within a datastep, it's not possible to do so using a calculated field? Is there any way around this to increase efficiency or is it only possible to use Proc SQL for this purpose?   Many thanks. D. ... View more

Hi,   I'm trying to loop over a string and assign a value  based on whether the value is a number or a character e.g.   data _null_; length Newcat $ 20; retain NewCat; Ref="123ABC"; do i=1 to length(Ref); val=substr(Ref,i,1); if val in ("1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9") then preCat="0"; else preCat="A"; NewCat=catt(NewCat,preCat); end; run;   This correctly solves to NewCat="000AAA". The issue is that I need this to work in a data step on a dataset with a number of rows   e.g.   data t1; set Work.Data; do i=1 to length(Ref); length Newcat $ 20; val=substr(Ref,i,1); if val in ("1","2","3","4","5","6","7","8","9") then preCat="0"; else preCat="A"; NewCat=catt(NewCat,preCat); end; run;   Any ideas would be massively appreciated. Thanks in advance. D. ... View more