Regarding your first tip, I would normally agree. Unfortunately, the nature of the data I'm using requires me to put multiple items in 1 variable.   For tip 2, if I can't use index or find or contains within SQL, how could I do this conditional join? I've played around using DATA and MERGE but it doesn't seem to produce the desired result.   If you need example data, I suppose this could work data set1; input serials:$20.; datalines; 12345|124|5498 4398|29893|3409|324 3498|0989 ;;; data set2; input serial:$5. stuff; datalines; 12345 metadata1 98 metadata2 0989 metadata3 ;;;; The desired output would look like: serials        stuff 12345|124|5498 metadata1 4398|29893|3409|324 3498|0989 metadata3   ... View more

The relevant column in dataset A contains a bunch of serial numbers that are delimited with "|", so something like "12345|23434|098543".   For dataset B, column 1 contains single serial numbers (e.g. "12345") and column 2 contains dates.   If A.column contains the serial number in B.column1, I want to add B.column2 to A.   Conceptually, it's something like: if find(A.column, B.column1) ~= 0 then A left join B.column2 ... View more