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Programming Tips

Strengthen your programming skills with tips and techniques from the experts

Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJune 17, 2011 0

How to use SAS DATA step to copy a file from anywhere

SAS-based processes are critical to many organizations, but sometimes the trickiest part of your job falls into one or both of these activities: Getting stuff from the outside world "into" SAS. (Once it's in SAS, as many of you know, the world is your oyster.) Getting the output of your

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMay 25, 2011 0

SAS Enterprise Guide options: my favorite 5

SAS Enterprise Guide has about 150 options that you can customize in the Tools->Options window. With each release, the development team adds a few more options that have been asked for by customers, and they rarely decommission any existing options. It's getting quite crowded on some of those options windows!

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMay 18, 2011 0

Behind the scenes: importing Excel files using SAS Enterprise Guide

I hope that the following statement is not too controversial...but here it goes: Microsoft Excel is not a database system. That is, I know that people do use it as a database, but it's not an application that supports the rigor and discipline of managing data in the same way

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMay 9, 2011 0

Calculating the number of working days between two dates

It's a simple task to use SAS to compute the number of weekdays between two dates. You can use the INTCK function with the WEEKDAY interval to come up with that number. diff = intck('WEEKDAY', start_date, end_date); If you want to compute the number of working days between two dates,

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMay 3, 2011 0

Using SAS Enterprise Guide to run programs in batch

SAS Enterprise Guide is best known as an interactive interface to SAS, but did you know that you can use it to run batch-style programs as well? SAS Enterprise Guide has always offered an automation object model, which allows you to use scripting languages (such as VBScript or Windows PowerShell)

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Programming Tips

Log transform data in SAS

Rick WicklinApril 27, 2011 0

Log transformations: How to handle negative data values?

The log transformation is one of the most useful transformations in data analysis. It is used as a transformation to normality and as a variance stabilizing transformation. A log transformation is often used as part of exploratory data analysis in order to visualize (and later model) data that ranges over

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarApril 25, 2011 0

Six reasons to love summer in Canada

Walking to work this sign caught my eye. I was moved as I’m sure you will be too – to see the lot of students universally. Like most folks, I’ve played different roles in life. Of them I would say that my part-time student role was the most challenging. My

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarApril 15, 2011 0

Where SAS trumps SQL- the easy way with Enterprise Guide

Just to set the record straight, I’m a programmer who loves to write code. While SAS Enterprise Guide (EG) does make reporting easier, this time it’s not the displays that caught my eye. EG won this round hands down for ease of use to summarize data. This blog post will

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsApril 6, 2011 0

Numeric Variables in SAS

~Contributed by Philip Busby, Applications Developer at SAS (@Philihp)~ My mind was blown just now at Paul Gorrell's talk on numeric values within SAS. The nice thing that hooks new programmers to SAS is how easy it is to do so many things, but what I find really makes a

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Programming Tips

Waynette TubbsApril 5, 2011 0

Running SAS PROCs on your Facebook friends

Contributed by Kirsten Hamstra, SAS Social Media Manager Prolific blogger and author of SAS for Dummies Chris Hemedinger knows maybe a little too much about his Facebook friends. Presenting his paper titled “Social Networking and SAS: Running PROCs on your Facebook Friends,” Chris shared basic techniques to analyze your friends

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarMarch 30, 2011 0

SAS Programmer Rule # 1

Let’s start with a quiz. Which of the following is the Programmer’s Rule # 1? 1. Expert knowledge of multiple languages, like SAS and Java 2. Talent to maneuver with complex algorithms 3. Innate ability to draw flowcharts 4. None of the above Dear reader, as a savvy programmer, you

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMarch 29, 2011 0

Undocumented features: there's a reason they are not documented

Many SAS users love "undocumented features" within SAS software that they have found or heard about. Sometimes they can be really useful, and the fact that they are undocumented adds to the mystique. Some users have written entire conference papers on the subject. After 35 years of evolution, SAS contains

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerMarch 2, 2011 0

Using ODS Graphics Designer with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3

The ODS Graphics Designer allows you to design and build your own statistical graphs in SAS, without having to learn how to program in the new graph template language (GTL). The ODS Graphics Designer is a rich user interface that allows you to design these graphs based upon your own

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarFebruary 23, 2011 0

Top 5 SAS programming best practices

I’m sure you will all agree that a programmer’s favorite task is to maximize efficiency thus enhancing performance. Dear reader, in this blog post I’ll share my best programming practices so that you can benefit from what I typically show my students in class. At the end I’d like to

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Programming Tips

Mark StevensFebruary 22, 2011 0

Sometimes It's the Journey, Not the Destination

Recently, I read Dr. AnnMaria De Mars' blog post "Translating Ruby to SAS (or vice versa)." I found that I really liked it, and not just because she mentions me (although that was pretty cool). But rather, I like the end of the post, where she identifies a key value

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerFebruary 17, 2011 0

Putting the squeeze on your SAS data sets

I've known several people who were raised during the Great Depression, and I've observed that they are very mindful of waste. My wife's grandmother used to save plastic bags, twist ties, and relatively clean aluminum foil for potential reuse in the household -- because such materials were once scarce. The

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerFebruary 4, 2011 0

New Goodies for SAS Programmers: View it now

Millions of Americans will be gathering around the television this Sunday to watch Super Bowl XLV. They'll gather in bars and private homes, prepare billions of calories worth of snacks, and root for their favorite teams. But if you're looking for an alternate form of entertainment, why not watch "New

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarJanuary 24, 2011 0

Find your data pattern with Perl

Who doesn’t like bargains? I’m sure you will all agree that good quality at a next-to-nothing cost is irresistible. My recent Dollarama run had me ecstatic about the gloves that come in all colours, styles and sizes for just over a dollar. (Fact: big retail stores charge over 10 times

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 19, 2011 0

Who am I to judge?

Tomorrow I'll be taking a few hours away from work to build something important: the self-esteems of a handful of middle-school-aged children. I'm volunteering as a judge in a middle-school science fair. And even though I'm not a scientist ("computer science" isn't a category), I understand enough about physical science

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarJanuary 12, 2011 0

A new year’s resolution that sounds like more fun than a spinning class

Last December I taught a SAS Programming 1: Essentials class at Statistics Canada (Statcan). My class could barely contain their mirth while I valiantly struggled to find the semicolon on the French keyboard. Far cry from my first move to Canada (which is a bilingual country) and my excitement about

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerJanuary 10, 2011 0

You asked for it: the Autoexec process flow

AUTOEXEC.SAS wasn't enough for you. Yes, it's a sure-fire way to run SAS statements (such as LIBNAME assignments or macro definitions) whenever you start your SAS session, but you found it has limitations when used in configurations with lots of users who connect with SAS Enterprise Guide. Limitations such as:

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerDecember 23, 2010 0

The SAS code formatter: more than a pretty face

A customer phoned up SAS Technical Support the other day with a problem. (Yes, that happens occasionally...) When he ran a certain program through SAS Enterprise Guide, the program didn't seem to complete and no results were returned. Here is a snippet of the program (modified a bit to make

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarDecember 22, 2010 0

Help! I need SAS syntax help but it vanished in SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3!

Ever since I got SAS Enterprise Guide 4.3, my help is not really helping, meaning, I don’t see a lot of items listed when I type ‘filename’ under Index. As you showed us in class with SAS Enterprise Guide 4.2, I used to see lots of items in the Index.

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerDecember 17, 2010 0

SAS logs in Enterprise Guide: Where's the beef?

You might be too young to remember Clara Peller. She was the star of a series of fast-food burger commercials in the 1980s, in which she demanded meatier meals by shouting "Where's the beef?" at the pickup counter or drive-through window. Alas, the competitor restaurant meals were afflicted with "Fluffy

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Learn SAS | Programming Tips

Charu ShankarDecember 17, 2010 0

Five reasons to use the SAS DATA Step or PROC SQL

When I joined SAS Institute I had no knowledge of SAS. I studied, researched and practiced. The questions I asked would make even the most seasoned programmer blush a beetroot red! Those were an intense nine months—I’ll tell you more in a later post about the learning system at SAS

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Advanced Analytics | Programming Tips

Rick WicklinDecember 10, 2010 0

Converting between correlation and covariance matrices

Both covariance matrices and correlation matrices are used frequently in multivariate statistics. You can easily compute covariance and correlation matrices from data by using SAS software. However, sometimes you are given a covariance matrix, but your numerical technique requires a correlation matrix. Other times you are given a correlation matrix,

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Programming Tips

Chris Hemedinger

Chris HemedingerDecember 8, 2010 0

In-your-face SETINIT warnings, at a desktop near you

I connect to more SAS server environments than your average SAS user. In a given week, I probably run SAS Enterprise Guide connecting to at least five different Windows-based servers, a few Unix-based servers, and maybe even a z/OS machine as well. With that many SAS environments, I'm bound to

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Advanced Analytics | Programming Tips

Computing covariance and correlation matrices in SAS

Rick WicklinDecember 8, 2010 0

Computing covariance and correlation matrices

Sample covariance matrices and correlation matrices are used frequently in multivariate statistics. This post shows how to compute these matrices in SAS and use them in a SAS/IML program. There are two ways to compute these matrices: Compute the covariance and correlation with PROC CORR and read the results into

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Programming Tips

Catherine (Cat) Truxillo

Catherine (Cat) TruxilloDecember 2, 2010 0

Weekday Morning Quick-trick: How to Score from PROC VARCLUS

Have you used multivariate procedures in SAS and wanted to save out scores? Some procedures, such as FACTOR, CANDISC, CANCORR, PRINCOMP, and others have an OUT= option to save scores to the input data set. However, to score a new data set, or to perform scoring with multivariate procedures that

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