Desire to match merge two data sets. The wrinkle is that If there is no match using a primary match variable, I'd like to also try to match with a secondary match variable. There is probably a simple way to do this but I haven't found it. Here's an example: Data A; TICKER Price A 10 AA 11 S 21 B 50 Data B; TICKER SECOND_TICKER OTHER_STUFF; A A Consumer AA ZZ REIT KMT S Consumer B BMT Industrial ; Want: A match merge of A and B using ticker, but if no match on ticker, then try finding one by using "second_ticker" as the match variable. This would be the ideal output: Data C: TICKER SECOND_TICKER PRICE OTHER_STUFF A A 10 Consumer AA zz 11 REIT S S 21 Consumer B BMT 50 Industrial So, there is no match between datasets A and B for the observation with ticker=S when using ticker as the primary match variable. However, there is a match for the no-match observation (ticker= S) between datasets A and B if we try again searching for matches using second_ticker in Dataset B and ticker in A I can accomplish this in a messy way by defining temporary match variables and doing multiple passes through the data - eventually combining partial results. But, Is there an elegant solution, or am I missing something obvious (SAS v9.4)?
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