Caution: If the length of your existing variable plus any prefix/suffix exceeds 32 then there is potential for name truncation.
Caution: If you don't know the names of the variables you have the potential to accidentally create duplicate names across sets if you mix use of prefix and suffixes.
You may also want to investigate additional text in variable Labels where there is much more room without causing coding problems.
Something that might also be of interest for identifying like named variables. This creates a table of all the variables in all the data sets in a library. Replace "LIBRARY" with the name of your library. The value should be in caps as that is how it is stored in your metadata.
The format places an X to indicate membership in the data sets by column.
I include the type as a common issue is same named variable with different data types and that might indicate something else you want to look at.
proc format library=work;
value mark
1='X'
other = ' '
;
run;
proc tabulate data=sashelp.vcolumn;
where libname='LIBRARY' and memtype='DATA';
class name type memname;
table name*type,
memname*n=' '*f=mark.
;
run;
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