How to Create or Modify a Variable in SAS Programming?
This will help you to create or modify a variable. It is common to define a new variable based on the existing variable.
Let’s create a dataset
In the code below, we are creating a dataset named as Example1 which is going to store on WORK(temporary) library. In this dataset, there would be a variable called OldRate which contains a numeric value. The RUN statement is defined to close the dataset program.
DATA Example1; OldRate=42; RUN; |
Output:
-
Creating a numeric variable
You can create variables using the form: variable = expression;
Suppose you are asked to create a new variable NewRate, in the existing SAS data set Example1. Both variables are numeric. The variable NewRate is twice of OldRate.
DATA Example1;
SET
Example1;
NewRate=3*OldRate;
RUN;
Output:
If you are asked to store a new variable NewRate on a new dataset, you can create it using DATA statement.
DATA Readin;
SET
Example1;
NewRate=3*OldRate;
RUN;
In above case, the dataset READIN was created.
- Creating a character variable
In the dataset Example1, let’s create a character variable as Type. The character value for the set is set ‘w3wiki’.
The quote marks need to be entered around the character variable.
DATA Example1;
SET
Example1;
Type =
'w3wiki'
;
RUN;
Output:
Since Type is a character variable, so the value entered should in quotes. It can be either single or double quotes.
-
Creating or Modifying a variable
Suppose the value of OldRate is increased by 8 units and you need to calculate the relative change in rate. In this case, we are modifying the existing variable OldRate so we will add 8 to OldRate. later we calculate the percentage change between old and new rate.
DATA Readin;
SET
Example1;
OldRate=8 + OldRate;
NewRate=OldRate*3;
Change= ((NewRate-OldRate)/ OldRate);
Format Change Percent10.0;
RUN;
Output:
The FORMAT statement is used to display the changed value in percentage format.
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