@cbagdon-cox wrote: I'm still baffled as to why the log wasn't identifying DOB as the problem variable and instead was showing the error for whatever was the last variable before the quit statement, not very helpful. One has a strong suspicion that the SAS developers sort of gave up on deciding where to attempt to place an error indicator since the places using an = might have multiple functions with multiple variables, sub-query results and such. So the error comes at the end of the whole statement , not 'the last variable'.   See this example where a text version of age was added to a copy of SASHELP.CLASS. The error comes neatly tucked in just after the semicolon that ended the create table selection and before the quit. If you had submitted multiple Create table or simple selections within a single Proc SQL call the error message does identify which specific query caused the problem 150 proc sql; 151 create table sqlexample as 152 select a.*, b.agetext 153 , (a.age=b.agetext) as compared 154 from sashelp.class as a 155 left join 156 work.example as b 157 on a.name=b.name 158 ; ERROR: Expression using equals (=) has components that are of different data types. 159 quit; ... View more