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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 25, 2013 10

11 super-useful custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide

The holiday season is here, and you're probably wondering how to shop for that picky SAS Enterprise Guide user on your gift list. I've got a few ideas for you, and the price is right! Here are links to 11 custom tasks that are free to download, easy to install,

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerNovember 6, 2013 19

Support for SAS on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

Microsoft Windows 8 has been with us for a year, and its first major update -- Windows 8.1 -- has just arrived. So how does SAS support these Windows 8 platforms? The answer can be found on support.sas.com in SAS Note 46876. I'll summarize it here: SAS 9.3 and SAS

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 29, 2013 38

5 keyboard shortcuts in SAS that will change your life

Okay, given the title of this article, I might be overselling the content a bit. Read on to see if your life will be transformed. I've just returned from SESUG, and this question came up during one of the presentations. While this tip might seem basic, it was news to

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 18, 2013 6

A custom task to check your data cardinality

The other day I showed how to check your data cardinality by using a simple SAS program. I also promised to provide a custom task that makes the process even easier within SAS Enterprise Guide. Today I'm delivering on that promise. I've just added the custom task to the support.sas.com

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 17, 2013 9

How to store data about your data in your data

Although the NSA and news media have given metadata a bad name in the popular press, the fact remains that information about the nature of your data is extremely valuable. For example, I posted an article yesterday about data cardinality. Cardinality measures the uniqueness of values in a variable. Cardinality

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 16, 2013 7

Your data ain't good looking, but it has a nice cardinality

Data cardinality is an important topic for for data analysis. In mathematical terms, cardinality is simply the number of elements in a set. But in data applications, cardinality signifies the number of unique values for a given field of data. Related terms include number of levels (thank you, PROC FREQ

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 8, 2013 21

Process Interruptus: a custom task to pause your process flow

Traditionally, SAS users like their processes to behave like Ron Popeil's famous rotisserie: they want to set it and forget it. That's the definition of a batch process. You work like heck to get it ready to run, then you push the button (or schedule it) and walk away. But

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerOctober 1, 2013 11

Put them back the way you found them: restoring SAS titles

Has this ever happened to you? You have a SAS program with statements that you wrote, then you make use of a macro function or %include file supplied by a helpful colleague, and when your SAS code resumes, you find that all of your SAS titles have been changed out

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 17, 2013 22

Copy a file using a SAS program: another method

A couple of years ago I shared a method for copying any file within a SAS program. It was a simple approach, copying the file byte-by-byte from one fileref (SAS file reference) to another. My colleague Bruno Müller, a SAS trainer in Switzerland, has since provided a much more robust

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Programming Tips

Chris HemedingerSeptember 5, 2013 1

New and improved: Importing SPSS data files in SAS Enterprise Guide

It's been almost 5 years since I posted one of the first custom tasks for SAS Enterprise Guide. It was a task that made it easier to convert SPSS data files into SAS data sets. Like many projects that begin as custom tasks, this one later became a feature in

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