Date:         Tue, 14 Mar 2000 13:56:07 -0500
Reply-To:     WHITLOI1 <WHITLOI1@WESTAT.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         WHITLOI1 <WHITLOI1@WESTAT.COM>
Subject:      Re: convert the date format from mmddyy to ddmmyy
Comments: To: John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

John,

Now to clear the air with some straight forward code, try this from a 6.12 log.

12
13   data _null_ ;
14      set w ;
15      put _n_= ;
16   run ;

_N_=5
_N_=4
_N_=3
_N_=2
_N_=1
_N_=0
_N_=-1
NOTE: The DATA statement used 0.16 seconds.


Ian Whitlock <whitloi1@westat.com>

____________________Reply Separator____________________
Subject:    Re: convert the date format from mmddyy to ddmmyy
Author: John Whittington <John.W@MEDISCIENCE.CO.UK>
Date:       3/14/2000 6:06 PM

At 11:21 14/03/00 -0500, Anne.Marie.Smith@ASTRAPHARMACEUTICALS.COM wrote:

>Paul,
>It is not a great idea to use "ddmmyy" as a variable name either,
>its a reserved word,  the SAS proper name of a format.  The practice of using
>reserved words
>as variable names creates all kinds of unnecessary duplicate reference
problems
>for the
>SAS language compiler :-) which may give you wildly erronious results.

Anne Marie, whilst I agree that there are some coding practices that can be
(accidentally or deliberately - have you ever seen Art Carpenter's
presentation?!!) potentially confusing to human readers of the code, the
SAS compiler does not really have much (if any) of a concept of 'reserved
words', so that the 'wildly erroneous results' you suggest are really not
much of a risk.  In any event, if anything were a reserved word', it would
be 'ddmmyy.' rather than 'ddmmyy'

If you still think that the SAS compiler thinks in terms of 'reserved
words', then have a play with the following (which does exactly 'as the
doctor ordered'- and, yes, does produce output!):

data retain ;
   retain retain return input ;
   input input where if until merge retain ddmmyy8. ddmmyy8 $ ;
   array sqrt(*) where ;
   if sqrt(1) > 20 ;
   if if = where ;
   set = merge ;
   end = if ;
   stop = until ;
   do = 9 ;
   do do = if to until ;
      leave = do ;
      continue = end ;
      if if > input then link return ;
   end ;
   return: return = retain ; return ;
   cards ;
16 24 24 99 25 14/03/99 John
;
run ;
proc print data = retain ; run ;

In virtually all cases, the SAS compiler handles that abomination
'correctly' (in terms of my twisted mind, as writer of the code) without
comment.  Only in the case of declaration of the array SQRT(*) does it
produce a note indicating that it is going to assume all references to
SQRT() relate to the array, and not to a function.

Kind Regards,


John

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