Date:         Tue, 23 Nov 2004 15:53:22 -0500
Reply-To:     "Fehd, Ronald J." <RJF2@CDC.GOV>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "Fehd, Ronald J." <RJF2@CDC.GOV>
Subject:      Re: meaning of  +(-1)?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> From: Igor Kurbeko
> What's the exact meaning of +(-1) and when do we use it?

> If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts

> If a man will begin with +(-1), he shall end with no space between
text

this is an advanced put statement option
it moves the column pointer forward + by negative one (-1)

DATA _Null_;
a = 'a';
b = 'b';
put a b;
put a +(-1) b;
stop;run;

a b
ab

the confusion is that this won't work:

put a -1 b;

because negative sign, hyphen, is not an put statement token
but plus sign is a meaningful token in the put statement
and you don't want an extra space, you want to move back
thus the negative one.

the committee that put this together read the .sig

Ron Fehd  the macro maven  CDC Atlanta GA USA RJF2 at cdc dot gov

"Nothing is particularly hard
if you divide it into small jobs."
- Henry Ford, Industrialist