Combining and Modifying SAS Data Sets: Examples, Version 6, First Edition [Paperback]

SAS Publishing (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 1995 | ISBN-10: 155544220X | ISBN-13: 978-1555442200 | Edition: 1st

Discover through examples how you can easily perform specific tasks to combine and modify SAS data sets. These examples demonstrate how to use the SET, MERGE, and MODIFY statements and the SQL procedure for combining and modifying SAS data sets. This book is written for intermediate to experienced SAS programmers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 175 pages
• Publisher: SAS Publishing; 1st edition (July 15, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155544220X
• ISBN-13: 978-1555442200
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,397,396 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Good for the Intermediate to Advanced User, November 15, 2002

By 

M. Allen Greenbaum (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Combining and Modifying SAS Data Sets: Examples, Version 6, First Edition (Paperback)

This book is best suited for intermediate to advanced SAS programmers who need to merge or otherwise combine or modify data sets. Although the MERGE command is quite simple, it can be quite tricky if not fully understood: Merge commands may combine your data in unexpected ways that won't always show as errors in your program log. Thus, it is extrememly important to know exactly what the program is doing.

There are numerous helpful examples that are divided into programming "goal," "strategy," "input data set(s)," "resulting data set," "program," and "where to go from here" (references to further discussions of the topic). As shown in the following brief excerpt, readers will benefit by knowing some programming terminology: "Goal: Within the same data set, look ahead from a variable value in one observation to return the value of the same variable in the observation that immediately follows it."

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Data Relationships, Access Methods, and Techniques for Data Manipulation.

Chapter 2. Combining Single Observations with Single Observations.

Chapter 3. Combining a Single Observation with Multiple Observations.

Chapter 4. Combining Multiple Observations with Multiple Observations.

Chapter 5. Manipulating Data From a Single Source.

Chapter 6. Utilities and Functions.

The last two chapters emphasize modifying rather than combining data sets, and have a great deal of useful information (e.g., adding new observations to the end of a data set, simulating the LEAD function, adding a new variable that contains the frequency of a by-group value, converting character and numeric variables, producing equal-sized random samples, etc.). PROC SQL is sometimes used in the programs. The 197-page book has many well-organized examples, and includes an appendix on error checking and a useful index.