Date:         Thu, 9 Aug 2007 09:38:12 -0700
Reply-To:     Matthew Yurdin <Matthew.Yurdin@UCOP.EDU>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Matthew Yurdin <Matthew.Yurdin@UCOP.EDU>
Subject:      macro for purging specified variables
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Does anyone have some code for searching through a number of specified
libraries/directories for SAS datasets containing certain specified
variables and then dropping all those variables from the datasets? The
idea here to get rid of personally-identifiable information when that
information can go by many different name variations and may or may not
found in a large number of datasets spread throughout many different
directories.
 
So I'm imagining something like...
 
%macro purgeids(libslist=temp1 temp2 temp3 temp4 temp5 etc,
/* libraries in which to search for datasets with any vars in &varlist
*/
                          varslist=ssn socsecno social_security_number
birthdate bdate bday   /* variables to look for in every dataset in
&libslist. If it finds anything from &varslist, it will re-save the
dataset with the same name but without the variable(s) */
);
 
 
/* ??????? */
 
 
%mend purgeids;
 
Thanks
-Matt