Charles' observation is correct. However, I think David Kellerman has omitted the STOP statement that should come immediately after the do loop ends and prior to the SET statement. What is the point of reading the whole dataset to find out whether the data set is empty?

If the STOP is incorporated then the placement of the SET statement matters.

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

-----Original Message----- From: Charles Patridge [mailto:Charles_S_Patridge@PRODIGY.NET] Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 11:09 AM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Statement placement

Dear David,

It works for me! Not sure what you tested or how but you can/should be able to have the SET statement before the IF .

see my log -

38 data a3; delete; run;

NOTE: The data set WORK.A3 has 0 observations and 0 variables. NOTE: DATA statement used: real time 0.01 seconds cpu time 0.01 seconds

39 40 DATA _NULL_; 41 SET A3 NOBS=HOWMANY; 42 IF HOWMANY = 0 THEN DO; 43 %put 'no records to process'; 'no records to process' 44 END; 45 RUN;

NOTE: There were 0 observations read from the data set WORK.A3. NOTE: DATA statement used: real time 0.03 seconds cpu time 0.01 seconds

Regards, Charles Patridge

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