You have already received some good solutions. For variety here is a single data step approach reading the data twice.

data flagthis ; input id x1 ; cards ; 12 2 12 3 12 -1 13 5 13 6 13 6 14 4 14 -3 14 3 run ;

data flagged ; do until ( last.id or x1 < 0 ) ; set flagthis ; by id ; if x1 < 0 then x2 = -2 ; else x2 = 2 ; end ; do until ( last.id ) ; set flagthis ; by id ; output ; end ; run ;

Kind Regards, __________________________ Venky Chakravarthy E-mail: swovcc@hotmail.com

-----Original Message----- From: Asheber Sewalem [mailto:sewalem@CDN.CA] Sent: Thursday, October 17, 2002 2:46 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Flag

Hi all,

A simple question! I have two variables id and x1. I just want to flag all "Id" records -2 if any of the records x1 within id is less than 0 otherwise flag=2.

A sample data,

id x1 12 2 12 3 12 -1 13 5 13 6 13 6 14 4 14 -3 14 3

The desired output should be the following,

id x1 flag 12 2 -2 12 3 -2 12 -1 -2 13 5 2 13 6 2 13 6 2 14 4 -2 14 -3 -2 14 3 -2

Asheber