You could try using UTF-8 encoding with Chinese locale: "C:\Program Files\SASHome\x86\SASFoundation\9.4\sas.exe" -encoding utf8 locale zh And see if that yields better results. If not, I also recommend contacting SAS Technical Support. ... View more

Concur with @Tom . Use a custom informat to catch expected special missing values. If other values appear, you'll still be notified. ... View more

Assuming that non-letters include spaces, punctuation, numbers, etc, you can use the ANYALPHA function to  differentiate letters from nonletters: data Have; length s $72; input s 1-72; /* number of letters and non-letters */ L = length(s); nLetters = 0; nNonLetters = 0; do i = 1 to L; isLetter = anyalpha(substr(s, i, 1)); nLetters + isLetter; nNonLetters + ^isLetter; end; output; drop i isLetter; datalines; In 28 days, the Anglo-Saxon lord ate 134 carrots. He had 20/20 vision! e^{i*pi} + 1 = 0 ABCDEFG 123 HIJK 456 LMNOP 789 QRSTUV 0 WXYZ ; proc print; run; ... View more

Probably the easiest way is to include the quote marks in the values you pass.  They will then protect the space and the comma.  e.g. :   %macro mymacro(str1, str2); data want; set have; if index(mystring, &str1) > 0 or index(mystring, &str2) > 0; run; %mend ; options mprint ; %mymacro(" FL",",C A") But certainly doing it via macro quoting will work.  And @LeonidBatkhan's blog is a great place to start. ... View more

Thanks! Do you have any suggestions for improving the editor's encoding issues? I used SAS 9.4 (English). If I add encoding='utf-8' into the import code, I got ERROR: Invalid string. FATAL: Unrecoverable I/O error detected in the execution of the DATA step program. Aborted during the EXECUTION phase. ... View more

@xyxu agree. Proc Expand is so short and smooth 🙂 ... View more

It would help a lot if you explained what the overall goal is because this request seems silly. Does your data only have 1's and missing?  Or could there be other non-missing values?  Does it matter what the first non-missing value is?   Why not just use a temporary array to make a rolling list of the previous N values? %let N=3 ; data want ; set have; array previous [&n] _temporary_ ; previous[1+mod(_n_,&n)]=value; n_previous = n(of previous[*]); select = n_previous=1 and not missing(value); run;   PS: Note there is no need to use such convoluted data steps to share such simple data. data have; input value @@ ; datalines; . . 1 . . . . 1 . 1 . . . 1 1 . . ; data expect ; input value select ; datalines; . 0 . 0 1 1 . 0 . 0 . 0 . 0 1 1 . 0 1 0 . 0 . 0 . 0 1 1 1 0 . 0 . 0 ; ... View more

How did you make the comments so well aligned on the right-hand side? Did you use any keyboard shortcut? ... View more

When using macros you can get a lot more detail in the log by adding some options. The System options MPRINT SYMBOLGEN and MLOGIC will provide details about the code generated, the steps in building macro variable values and the comparisons in the macro logic.   You would submit code such as this to turn the options, run the code then turn the option off.   options mprint; %winsorize(inset = have, outset = want, sortvar = region, vars = number, perc1 = 2.5, trim = 0); options nomprint; Now you will have more details in the log about the code generated.   I don't use this macro but the sort of message you get is typically the result of either not providing the correct option in one of the parameters or possibly an unexpected character in one of your parameters. I might suggest removing the space before the 2.5 in the macro call in case it is something other than an actual simple blank character which might happen when copy and pasting text from some sources. If that doesn't help then show us all the, yes it gets ugly, generated from the macro call that the MPRINT option creates. We may then suggest if SYMBOLGEN or MLOGIC may be needed.   ... View more

I  suggest you stick with data step merge (in comparison to proc SQL). The already have a  code that  needs some modifications as follows and you will be nearing your goal. As suggested by @ballardw  make corrections to the sort syntax. In addition rename the common variables (other than by variables) in one of the datasets. You may have to do home post processing to the merged dataset to get exactly what you want, but you can easily achieve your objective of purging the rows of dataset2 from dataset1.   ... View more