In my head I had it right ... I meant data _null_; set have end=end_of_have; length value $10 freq 8; if _n_=1 then do; declare hash h (ordered:'a'); h.definekey('value'); h.definedata('value','freq'); h.definedone(); end; array month {12} f1-f12; do m=1 to 12; value=month{m}; if h.find()^=0 then freq=1; else freq=freq+1; h.replace(); end; if end_of_have then h.output(dataset:'want'); run; ... View more

One thing that is a little weird: somehow this approach loses 1,800 person-months. But that's out of 818,600,000 million person-months, so I think I can live with the results in aggregate 🙂 ... View more

Agreed that counties don't change very often ... Connecticut was the last big one of which I am aware. Thanks for pointing out that ZIP file -- always good to have something like that on tap. ... View more

Thanks! I like the elegance of this ... but given that county FIPS code sets change from one year to the next, the code line array t(7) $ 1 _temporary_ ('A','B','C','D','E','F','G'); could get cumbersome really fast.   I'll save this, though, for a time when there are fewer possible field values! ... View more

Thanks! That seems to be the most elemental solution -- one that first occurred to me and that runs overnight. It has definite curb appeal. I have a wealth of options from which to choose! ... View more

Perfect! Thank you! ... View more

Thanks to both of you for your comments; I agree that long beats wide and that tidy beats messy. And last night as I read my own post, I realized that macros are executed at compile-time execution and not at object-time.   However, I fear that I did not explain my problem very well. I was given a large file: 60-some million person-records, each with their county of residence in each of the 12 months of the year. My task is to count up person-months for each county. So transposing the existing dataset would not be a good thing.   The hit-it-with-a-stick approach would be to write out 12 records for each person and then summarize over counties; but I do not relish wrangling 720 million records. Another approach might be to create a monster SELECT(f{i}) "snippet" running from county 01000 to 99999, outputting at EOF and then transposing the results.   I was going for some kind of elegant run-time solution that points directly to the county counter that needs to be increased ... maybe a CALL function or something. But I also don't mind hitting something with a stick if it looks to be a one-time thing. ... View more