Date:         Tue, 31 Aug 2004 16:17:17 -0400
Reply-To:     "Huang, Ya" <yhuang@AMYLIN.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Huang, Ya" <yhuang@AMYLIN.COM>
Subject:      Re: Randomly choose a variable value
Comments: To: Dan Litsky <d_litsky@YAHOO.COM>

On Tue, 31 Aug 2004 12:41:12 -0700, Dan Litsky <d_litsky@YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>Is there a way to search through 6 (or so) variables in a record and
randomly choose one of the values?
>
>Thanks,
>Dan
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!

Use array and ranuni() generated number as the index:

data xx;
array vv(6) v1-v6 (1,2,3,4,5,6);
do i=1 to 5;
output;
end;
run;

data xx;
 set xx;
array vv(6) v1-v6;
randpick=vv(ceil(ranuni(123)*6));
drop i;
run;

proc print noobs;
run;
---------
 v1    v2    v3    v4    v5    v6    randpick

  1     2     3     4     5     6        5
  1     2     3     4     5     6        2
  1     2     3     4     5     6        2
  1     2     3     4     5     6        6
  1     2     3     4     5     6        3

Kind regards,

Ya Huang