Since the composite of the varnames is going to be a constant, then you can include this code, which calculates it just once:   length big_long_composite $120; retain big_long_composite; if _n_=1 then do I=1 to dim(vars);   big_long_composite=catx(',',vname(vars{i})); end;   ... View more

That is exactly what arrays are designed for.  From your code it looks like you have one input array and two output arrays.  Note that I would change the naming of the output variables to have the numeric part as the suffix since then it is easier to use variable name lists. array VAL A1-A4; array DEN DEN_A1-DEN_A4 ; array POS POS_A1-POS_A4 ; Now just wrap your logic inside of a DO loop and replace your variable references with array references. do i=1 to dim(VAL); if val(i) in (4,5) then pos(i)=1; else if val(i) in (1,2,3) then pos(i)=0; if val(i)=. then den(i)=0 else den(i)=1; end; ... View more