Date:         Mon, 7 Jul 2008 14:31:47 +0000
Reply-To:     iw1junk@COMCAST.NET
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Ian Whitlock <iw1junk@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Re: How To Quickly Examine Multiple Fields and Select Nonmissing
              Value(s)
Comments: cc: Takeadoe <mtonkovich@MSN.COM>

Summary: Data structure determines algorithm, hence programming effort.
#iw-value=1

Takeadoe,

   data w ;
      input id1-id6 ;
      seq = _n_ ;
   cards ;
   ID1 ID2 ID3 ID4 ID5 ID6
   6   .   .    .   .  .
   .  98   .    .   .  .
   .   .  76   76   .  .
   8   .   .    .   .  .
   ;

   proc transpose data = w out = t ;
      by seq ;
      var id1-id6 ;
   run ;

   proc sort data = t nodupkey
             out = t2 ( keep = col1 rename = ( col1 = id )) ;
      where not missing ( col1 ) ;
      by col1 ;
   run ;

   proc print data = t2 ;
   run ;

Ian Whitlock
===============

Date:         Mon, 7 Jul 2008 07:13:06 -0700
Reply-To:     Takeadoe <mtonkovich@MSN.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion"
From:         Takeadoe <mtonkovich@MSN.COM>
Organization: http://groups.google.com
Subject:      How To Quickly Examine Multiple Fields and Select
Nonmissing
              Value(s)
Comments: To: sas-l
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Good morning,

I've got a job that needs far more experience than I have. A sample of
the dataset follows: I'm using "m" to indicate missing value.

ID1 ID2 ID3 ID4 ID5 ID6 6 m m m m m m 98 m m m m m m 76 76 m m 8 m m m
m m

My goal is a dataset that looks like this:

ID 6 98 76 8

So, how can I easily check each of the 6 ID fields and assign the
nonmissing value to the new variable ID? Note that there will be an
occassion where a record may contain 2 or more nonmissing values. The
values will be the same in all cases when that happens.

Any help at all, would be great. The dataset is nearly 1,000,000
records.