Sas logical program data vector

Lew and Horstman suggest two ways to avoid errors caused by the automatic retain:. She has more than 20 years experience as a technical writer and communications specialist for SAS. Else help us through hardcode. Thanks for reaching out through the blog. You can submit general coding requests to one of our SAS communities for additional tips and best practices.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. KVSB on November 29, am. SAS creates and maintains the descriptor information. All executable statements in the DATA step are executed once for each iteration. If your input file contains raw data, then SAS reads a record into the input buffer. SAS then reads the values in the input buffer and assigns the values to the appropriate variables in the program data vector.

SAS also calculates values for variables created by program statements, and writes these values to the program data vector. When the program reaches the end of the DATA step, three actions occur by default that make using the SAS language different from using most other programming languages:.

SAS writes the current observation from the program data vector to the data set. If there is another record to read, then the program executes again. SAS builds the second observation, and continues until there are no more records to read. As discussed earlier, the input data contains each participant's identification number, name, team name, and weight at the beginning and end of a week weight program:.

The following list corresponds to the numbered items in the preceding program:. The INPUT statement creates five variables, indicates how SAS reads the values from the input buffer, and assigns the values to variables in the program data vector. The assignment statement creates an additional variable called Loss, calculates the value of Loss during each iteration of the DATA step, and writes the value to the program data vector. The single semicolon marks the end of the input data and the DATA step.

As the following figure shows, the program data vector contains the variables that are named in the INPUT statement, as well as the variable Loss. Note that missing numeric values are represented by a period, and missing character values are represented by a blank. The syntax is correct, so the DATA step executes. Then, according to the instructions in the INPUT statement, SAS reads the data values in the input buffer and assigns them to variables in the program data vector.

This assignment statement calculates the value for the variable Loss and writes that value to the program data vector, as the following figure shows. Execution continues.