Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 12:35:49 -0400
Reply-To: "Wainwright, Andrea" <andrea.wainwright@CAPITALONE.COM>
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: "Wainwright, Andrea" <andrea.wainwright@CAPITALONE.COM>
Subject: Re: mistakes in SAS that don't generate errors
In-Reply-To: A<1181894449.459835.142190@c77g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
My pet peeve has always been merging but forgetting to use a by
statement. There is an option to make that an error, but by default you
get a warning.
-----Original Message-----
From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
ckxplus@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, June 15, 2007 4:01 AM
To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: mistakes in SAS that don't generate errors
I'm looking for ways to produce unexpected results in SAS that don't
generate an error or warning message. Your syntax is fine, it works as
SAS intended but not as you intended. Three examples:
* Inadvertantly respecify a user-defined format. (This does generate a
note to the log that an existing format has been overwritten but that's
easy to overlook).
* Using a "numbered range list" in a function, e.g. "sum(x1-x5)". This
will calculate the sum of x1 minus x5, "sum(of x1-x5)" caculates the sum
of x1 to x5.
* Forgetting that missing values are represented by minus infinity in
comparisons.
Are there other nice examples of SAS syntax that looks like it does what
you want it to at first glance or with insufficient coffee?
John Hendrickx
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