Ray,

Thanks for your response. Your syntax solution is clever!!

Let me get to the heart of the matter. I had previously run this file through the interactive system and, of course, received the warning about no cases. However, the program did not terminate or print any message indicating that an error had occurred. I did not expect that skipping a command would cause a job to terminate. And, i don't believe that it should.

Perhaps someone from spss would care to clarify the differences in the handling of warning and errors between production and interactive modes. I don't believe that the 10.0 manual does so.

Second, Based on my reading of the documentation, I had always understood that, unlike sas, spss did not permit inserting procedure commands in a DO IF structure. Am I incorrect (I'd like to be on this point)?

Thanks, Gene Maguin