Date:         Sat, 22 Nov 2003 15:53:16 -0500
Reply-To:     Theodore <tsmonk@EUDORAMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Theodore <tsmonk@EUDORAMAIL.COM>
Organization: Bell Sympatico
Subject:      Re: Function to select one record in each of multiple subsets of
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed

Thanks for the promtp help, John. You set up the problem that I have;
however, there is a wrinkle that I do not see covered in your solution.

Each record in the 'event' (jobs) file has a large number of variables'
scores (over 150 variables in my file) and I want to write to the new
file everything that is on the record with the longest job for employee X.

It seems that your solution is writitng to the new file only the value
for the job duratyion variable.  If I am right, do you have any
suggestions on how to deal with the wrinkle in your procedure?

Thanks in advance.
___

John Fleming wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 10:46:06 -0500, Theodore <tsmonk@EUDORAMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
>
>>Hello!
>>       Does anyone know of a way to compare valuss in a specified field
>
> among
>
>>a subset of records and write to a new file only one record that
>>satisfies a given criterion (e.g. the longest job duration, among
>>multiple jobs held by one respondent), and then repeat the process over
>>a very large number of subsets (e.g. respondents in my example above  --
>>the has records for jobs held by respondents)?  I can't find a SAS
>>function that can do this, so I am seeking confirmation that it cannot
>>be done in SAS. Thanks.
>
>
>
> If I understand what you want to do, you have a data set, 'A' with subsets
> of the form -
>
>      Employee     Duration
>
>      00001        365 days
>      00001        746 days
>      00001        655 days
>
>      00002        498 days
>      00002       1103 days
>      00002        965 days
>
> For the example, you want just the largest values in a separate data set,
> that is, the 746 day record for employee 00001 and the 1103 day record for
> employee 00002.
>
> We do stuff like this a lot in our shop.
>
> There is probably a better way, but here is how we do it;
>
> DATA B;
>      SET A;
>      KEY = EMPLOYEE||DURATION;
>
> PROC SORT;
>      BY KEY;
>
> DATA C;
>      SET B;
>      BY KEY;
>
>      IF LAST.KEY;
>
> RUN;