Contributed by Michele Burlew, president of Episystems Inc. and SAS Press author

My SAS writing adventure this summer is a new book that will cover hash object programming. It won’t be very long, maybe 100 pages, and it will have lots of examples. As a longtime SAS programmer, I was reluctant to learn another technique for looking up data since I can manipulate data sets with DATA steps and PROC steps pretty easily. However, as I learned about hash objects when writing Combining and Modifying SAS Data Sets: Examples, I was amazed at what I could accomplish with them.

In my day job at the University of Minnesota, and as a consultant, I now find applications for hash objects all the time. I’m definitely double-dipping! The more I read up on hash objects to prepare for writing the book, the more I find applications for them in my work. The more I use them every day, the more ideas I have for examples.

What else does a hash object fan do in the summer? I have a large vegetable garden. I grow 15 varieties of garlic and a dozen varieties of tomatoes, with varieties planted in alphabetical order. Hmm…it appears my theme for this summer is arranging things in keyed order.