Date:         Fri, 18 Jul 2003 16:15:10 -0400
Reply-To:     Howard Schreier <Howard_Schreier@ITA.DOC.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Howard Schreier <Howard_Schreier@ITA.DOC.GOV>
Subject:      Re: help

1. In the future, please use more informative Subject lines. Something
like "RETAIN Problem" or "Filling In Missing Values" would have been
appropriate here.

2. I don't think the code you present is really what you ran, because it
fails due to the BY variables being out of sequence before it processes the
observation with LNUM=9943.

3. Try this (my additions in UPPER CASE):

   data d2;
   set d1;
   by id lnum NOTSORTED;
   retain clm2;
   LENGTH CLM2 $ 8.;
   IF FIRST.LNUM THEN CLM2 = '';
   if clm  ne ' ' then do;
      clm2=clm;
      end;
   run;

4. You do not indicate whether CLM might take on different values within a
BY group. Your example suggests not. My code should work in either case,
but a solution which assigns values to CLM2 only at BY group boundaries
would not.

On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 11:28:25 -0700, Max <max8ca@YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>Hello there,
>
>I have a dataset where one variable have some missing
>value.
>I want to replace the missing value with the value
>above
>it under the same LNUM. The original data is
>
>
>    ID      LNUM     clm
>
>    483    9048     J085
>    483    9943
>    483    2652     H915
>    483    2652
>
>
>I need to create a new variable that takes the same
>value for
>CLM under the same LNUM, so the new variable looks
>like:
>
>
>    ID      LNUM     clm      clm2
>
>    483    9048     J085      J085
>    483    9943
>    483    2652     H915      H915
>    483    2652               H915
>
>
>I tried to use RETAIN, but it assigns the value for
>LNUM 9943,
>which is not supposed to:
>
>    ID      LNUM     clm      clm2
>
>    483    9048     J085      J085
>    483    9943               JO85
>    483    2652     H915      H915
>    483    2652               H915
>
>
>My code is
>
>
>data d2;
>   set d1;
>   by id lnum;
>   retain clm2;
>   if clm  ne ' ' then do;
>      clm2=clm;
>      end;
>run;
>
>
>
>Any help would be appreciated.
>
>
>Max
>
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