Date:         Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:23:04 -0500
Reply-To:     "./ ADD NAME=Data _null_," <iebupdte@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         "./ ADD NAME=Data _null_," <iebupdte@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Masking a particular field (SAS 9.1.3)
Comments: To: Lou <lpogoda@hotmail.com>
In-Reply-To:  <gdoi5d$if4$1@aioe.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Have you never heard of HEX format.  The value is irrelevant. The
point is to code it.   It seems no different from assigning random
numbers or any other arbitrarily coded value.

1183  data _null_;
1184     do subjid = '10011','20011','31113';
1185        md5 = md5(subjid);
1186        put 'NOTE: ' subjid= md5=hex32.;
1187        end;
1188     run;

NOTE: subjid=10011 md5=A2369958A9645EAC52B58A8134E2EF5A
NOTE: subjid=20011 md5=AC09BDC10C90D57BD2D9117485CE3FA7
NOTE: subjid=31113 md5=E5C1744E18EE06806B928A7B9129435F


On 10/22/08, Lou <lpogoda@hotmail.com> wrote:
> ""./ ADD NAME=Data _null_,"" <iebupdte@GMAIL.COM> wrote in message
> news:ce1fb7450810220428g63d390a0q8bd2ef19ed139e4f@mail.gmail.com...
> > MD5 function does "something" in version 9.1.  See if this works on
> > your computer.
> >
> > data md5;
> >    ver = sasver();
> >    do id = '100101','100121';
> >       id5 = md5(id);
> >       output;
> >       end;
> >    run;
> > proc print;
> >    run;
>
> Well, it does "something" on my computer as well, but I don't quite see the
> point - the resulting string isn't "typable" from the normal keyboad unless
> you happen to know ascii code and type with the Alt key and the numeric
> keypad.
>
> And even if it was, you can't undo it, should the need arise, without using
> some sort of conversion table or a brute force search.  If you could, MD5
> would be the best compression algorithm yet - take any file and reduce it to
> a checksum 32 hexadecimal digits long.
>
> I'd suggest that if you're going to need a conversion table anyway, forget
> about hashing the id, and in any case produce something humanly legible.
>
> >
> > On 10/22/08, Anindya Mozumdar <anindya.lugbang@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > All,
> > >     I have a dataset which contains a field for identifying a
> > > customer, say cust_id. I need to mask the cust_id (before I send it
> > > out of the company to be used by someone else) so that I have a unique
> > > masked value for each cust_id. I thought a simple hash function would
> > > work, but there does not seem to be any in SAS 9.1.3 - I am aware of
> > > md5 in SAS 9.2. Is there are any easy way to do this in 9.1.3, without
> > > thinking about a masking logic of my own? Thanks in advance.
> > > Regards,
> > > Anindya
> > >
>